Articles on The Student Insurgent

On Trans Women in Sports

Ivy — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 15:02:29 -0800

I’ve been an athlete my whole life. Whether it’s been Baseball in elementary school, soccer in middle school, rowing in high school, or running & the stair master (my love <3) on my own in college, I’ve always enjoyed exercising. When I realized I was a transgender woman in my junior year of high school, I debated asking my coaches if I could join the women’s team, as they had both shown their support for protecting transgender athletes. One of the coaches had a transgender son, and we had 3 transmasculine rowers on the team at the time. I ultimately decided against it and came to the unfortunate conclusion to quit rowing after high school as I feared something like the recent ban on transgender women in all NCAA women’s athletics would happen. I also feared being unfairly targeted and harassed by people I don’t even know.

Athletics are so important to growing children. They serve as an incredible outlet for children to learn important skills, make connections, have a passion for something, and stay active. Trans people and children should not be excluded from this. Forcing them to compete with their assigned gender at birth when they don’t feel comfortable doing that is not allowing that. The whole trans women in sports debate is very much a non-issue that only exists to create a moral panic around transgender people, especially transgender women.

Almost every argument against transgender people is directed against transgender women and ignores the existence of transmasculine people entirely. Men are not pretending to be women to dominate in women’s sports. If they were, there would have been more than 10 trans women out of the 500,000+ athletes competing in NCAA sports, and at least 1 transgender woman competing in the 2024 Paris Olympics. There is so much blatant misinformation about trans women competing in women’s sports because the little information that is out there comes from wildly incorrect statements made by people who know nothing.

Lia Thomas is an American swimmer who pre-transition had multiple times recorded in top 100 in the nation and held the 6th fastest 1000 yard freestyle time in the nation as a college freshman. She swam on the men’s team for a whole year after coming out and had to be on hormones for an entire year before being able to compete on the women’s team to comply with regulations. These regulations for transgender athletes are understandable, and I am fine with them existing for college and professional level athletics only, and only as a requirement to compete, not practice, as long as trans women are allowed to compete in women’s sports when they meet these requirements.

Claiming Lia Thomas suddenly became dominant after she transitioned is just factually wrong. After transitioning her times got worse as expected, as taking hormones deteriorates muscle mass, increases bone density, and increases body fat percentage, and she was still being beaten by cisgender female athletes. She still managed to win an NCAA D1 National Championship in the women’s 500 yard freestyle before her career was cut short after being banned from competing in women’s swimming events. Even without the bans, Lia Thomas faced lots of targeted harassment towards her and her college, and recently had her school records she worked so hard for stripped from her.

In September 2024, Brooke Slusser had outed her teammate on the San Jose State University women’s volleyball team as being transgender to “protect women against males in women’s sports.” This caused a lot of controversy for the team, resulting in 7 teams boycotting playing their team, and giving them 7 free wins to their 14-7 season. The trans athlete had previously competed on the team for 2 years with there being no issue and SJSU’s team and record is nothing extraordinary. It was only when she was outed by her teammate that it became an issue.

Outing someone is one of the worst things you can do to a trans person, it is robbing them of their humanity, preventing them from coming out to people on their own terms, and potentially puts them in a lot of danger, which happened not only to the trans player, but also to the many other players and coaches on the team who became targets of harassment online and protests outside of their games. Many of the schools who had forfeited against them also put out statements to why they did, where they publicly called the trans athlete a male, and news sources use her full name, making her a target for even more harassment.

This is not about protecting women’s sports, many of these people do not even care about women’s sports to begin with, we are just targeted because we are such a small minority of the population. It just makes women’s sports a more dangerous place when harassment like this is normalized. Reading through comments made about trans female athletes is absolutely sickening, and it saddens me how little support there is for this issue even from “progressive” people.

Sports are not fair at the top level. The best athletes all have genetic differences from regular people that help them excel at their sport. Literally just look at Michael Phelps. His body was made to be the best swimmer in the world and nothing else, with his incredibly large wingspan, height, and his body producing less lactic acid than normal. Iten, Kenya, a city of only 42,000 people, has produced so many of the greatest long distance runners because of its high elevation and transport on foot being so common, encouraging a lot of running. All sports’ top athletes have specific builds that help them excel at their sports. No matter how hard I tried I could’ve never been one of the best basketball players because I’m 5’8.

When I started rowing my first year on varsity it immediately became clear I was one of the worst on the team. I was a 5’8 boy in a sport where even the best women are at least 5’10. I placed in the bottom of almost every single race until I finally won one at the end of that year, in a scholastic teams only race. I continued to put in much more effort than others to improve and I was still worse than people on my team who, even those who had a whole year less experience than me.

Ideally sports would be fair but they aren’t. I was on a school team of around 30-40 people combined for the men’s and women’s varsity and novice teams, having to race against private teams of 200+ athletes from all over that received much more funding and had elite level coaches and athletes (although I had a gold medalist olympian as a coach Junior year :p shout out to Erin Cafaro <3). Sports try to be fair but they can’t ever be completely fair. Allowing the few publically trans women that do play sports to compete with other women will not ruin the competitive integrity of the sport or make them any less fair than they already are. It will only ensure equality and greater acceptance for transgender people everywhere which creates a safer environment for everybody.

The argument against excluding transgender women in women’s sports is rooted in so much misogyny, believing that the average athletic adult male could walk on to any professional women’s sports team and immediately dominate with little experience. It completely disregards the hours and hours of daily training across many years that these women have put into their sport and minimizes the accomplishments made by these incredible athletes.

Trans female athletes are not even allowed to compete in professional sports without lowered testosterone levels for at least a year before competing. This regulation on testosterone levels in women has resulted in attacks on many female athletes of color. Athletes like Christine Mboma, Beatrice Masilingi, Caster Semenya, Dutee Chand, and countless others have all been discriminated against for having various androgen disorders like hyperandrogenism by athletic committees and spectators. Rules in place have disqualified these women from competing or have forced them to medically reduce their natural hormone levels to compete.

On top of the previously mentioned athletes, Lin Yu-ting and Imane Khelif were the subjects of attacks by transphobes during the 2024 Olympics as they were both accused of being transgender women. It’s very common for women of color to face allegations of being transgender because our conceptions of what a “man” or “woman” are is based on white European features and standards, and a woman that is not valued as conventionally attractive is often seen as masculine through the gaze of western society. Transphobia is not just transphobia, it is racism, sexism, homophobia, and ableism too. These attacks take away from the incredible accomplishments by these women who deserve so much praise, and attention for their accomplishments, not harassment for something that isn’t even true.

A lot of trans “allies” do not support trans people. You cannot support trans people but be against trans women competing in women’s sports or being in women’s spaces. On top of the obvious things, such as blatantly misgendering us, if you use us as gotchas, use they/them pronouns on us when we don’t use them, are against neo-pronouns, aren’t supportive of gender identities outside of male, female, and non-binary or you uphold gender norms on others at all, misgender people because they’re a bad person, are a bio-essentialist; believing behavior of men and women is inherent to their gender, say a trans person looks more like a man or a woman than a transphobe, saying transphobes are secretly attracted to us, tell someone a person is trans for them (without their permission), treat trans people who don’t pass any differently from those that do, focus on the fact that transphobia hurts cis people more than the harm it causes trans people, center your feminism around having a uterus, continually platform or support transphobes, infantilize us, or fetishize us, you aren’t a good ally as you think you are. Extra emphasis on the fetishization part btw. Your allyship extends to all trans people or it extends to nobody. Don’t equate being gay to liking dick, being a lesbian to liking pussy, etc. or trans women as just women with dicks. And stop using “AMAB” and “AFAB” too. I almost never see those terms being used in a way that is not at least slightly transphobic or exclusionary to trans people.

There is no “I support Trans people but…” you need to have unconditional support of us no matter what, just using our correct name and pronouns is never enough. Let transgender people play in the sports they want to, let trans kids be kids and not have to worry about their rights being taken away from them or be forced into spaces they are not comfortable in. Supporting trans people right now is so important as the republican party is trying to eradicate our very existence and the democratic party can’t even pretend to care about us anymore.

I fear for all of my trans siblings who live in states that are actively having their rights taken away, all the trans sex workers who are forced into this line of work and have to sell their body to support their transition because it’s more difficult to get hired as a trans person, while facing higher rates of sexual assault and violence, all the trans people unable to start their transition due to social or financial circumstances, all the trans people who have been murdered or have commit suicide before they can live out their full lives, all the trans people in places where being transgender is illegal or access to gender affirming care is illegal or limited, trans people who hold identities that put them in even more danger and discrimination, those that have been forced to detransition, trans people who have lost family and friends because of their transition, all the trans children being forced to go through a puberty that does not align with the one they desire, and trans people of color especially who have higher rates of experiencing all of these things than their white counterparts. I fear for the future of all trans people. Trans people everywhere I love you, and never stop being you.

Fear mongering about issues like trans women in sports or in women’s bathrooms is exactly what has led to the position trans people are in in the US right now. These issues are made to seem much larger than they really are to give justification to dehumanize us, we’re such a small portion of the population which makes targeting us so easy. We’re being blamed for so many of the world’s problems, othered, dehumanized, and disrespected so blatantly. We’re supposed to act like living in a society where so much of the population wants us dead is normal. We’re supposed to be content with our “resistance” party who gave up on us because it protects their safety, and lost twice to one of the most awful people alive in the most slam dunk elections ever. Taking away our rights is not going to stop at banning us from women’s sports or women’s bathrooms, they’re not stopping until we’re all eradicated from society.

From Comfort to Accountability: A Call to Action for White People

Lukas Brennan — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 11:03:32 -0800

From Comfort to Accountability: A Call to Action for White People

Before reading this op-ed, I want to make two points clear. First, this text serves as a living document through which my perceptions change and grow across time. Because of this, the writing is by no means complete and should be consumed with this understanding. Secondly, while the writing is directed to white people concerning race, this struggle expands across all systems of oppression and can be applied to different forms of oppression, as one sees fit. Lastly, I would like to give credit to Ibram Kendi’s book, “How to Be an Antiracist,” which inspired this op-ed.

Dear my white brothers, sisters, and elders: this is a call to action. Injustice doesn’t need our hatred; it only needs our inaction.

Many of us have been conditioned to see oppression as something external, believing that as long as we avoid overtly racist behavior, we are innocent. But if racism remains invisible to white eyes, it’s easy to believe we’ve done enough. Like fish in water, we move through a world shaped by whiteness so seamlessly we rarely recognize it.

Consider the white college student who shakes off responsibility by claiming to treat everyone equally by holding space for all experiences. The question is, can we truly hold space for different experiences through equal treatment when the white spaces we exist in–ones of racial power dynamics, historically relevant contexts, internalized racism, and systemic inequality–fail to acknowledge the unique challenges faced by marginalized communities? This is not disengaging from race–it’s reinforcing it. Ignoring these realities can perpetuate discrimination and invalidate the lived experiences of people of color, as it overlooks the historical injustices that continue to impact their lives. Lastly, a color-blind approach can undermine efforts to address systemic inequalities and reinforce existing power imbalances, ultimately hindering meaningful dialogue and progress toward social justice. Claiming to treat everyone equally does not protect anyone–it protects the status quo, allowing implicit biases and oppressive structures to persist unchecked.

Moments like these reveal that we are not passive bystanders; we are shaped by and complicit in the systems around us. If this reading brings up feelings of discomfort, that is a sign that you’re beginning to see the water we swim in. We must lean into the discomfort and learn how this fear of discomfort maintains the status quo. A reckoning has come, and we must acknowledge our role in racism not because of what we fear people see in us, but what we fail to see in ourselves.

Anti-Racism Defined

Anti-racism is not just about being “not racist”; it is an active process of identifying, challenging, and changing the systems, policies, and beliefs that sustain racial inequality.

Ibram Kendi defines racism as the combination of racist ideas and racist policies, which work together to legitimize and maintain these inequalities. For example, racist narratives often blame poverty on individual laziness or personal failure, ignoring the systemic barriers that produce inequality–barriers like redlining, which restricted Black families’ ability to own homes and build generational wealth. These narratives don’t just misrepresent reality; they shift blame away from the oppressive systems onto the very people harmed by them. Anti-racism as an ideology seeks to combat and replace these harmful narratives and the structures of inequality they uphold.

When we allow our ignorance to persist, we allow racist ideas to thrive. When we fail to confront racist structures, we uphold them with our inaction. Becoming an antiracist is not about perfecting a set of beliefs or arriving at a single destination. It is about taking up a lifelong responsibility to resist systems of oppression in every space we occupy, from our external environments to our own minds.

In the pages that follow, I will explore how education broadens our vision, how decentralization reshapes our engagement, and how action becomes a bridge between our values and the world we seek to build. These practices are not isolated steps but interwoven responsibilities that call us to live differently, think differently, and, most importantly, act together.

Education

The more we indulge ourselves in critical education, the more pluralistic our perspectives become. Ignorance breeds fear, and fear breeds hatred. These seeds of hatred are dangerous, and our job as white people is to follow our hatred, fear, and ignorance to its roots, and pull them out–replacing the ignorance with diverse perspectives that are more inclusive, equitable, and reflective of humanity’s similarities and beautiful complexities.

As proposed by Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci, our imagination is limited to the information we have access to. Knowledge is what gives people power and makes them dangerous. It provides us with definitions and frameworks of thought–tools that expand our autonomy of mind and grant us a greater number of lenses through which to view the world.

Kendi states, “If we do not do the work of defining the people we want to be in language that is stable and consistent, we can’t work towards stable and consistent goals.” Some of the most transformative moments in dismantling racism come from arriving at foundational definitions and understanding what we are truly working toward.

White people, and all of humanity for that matter, must commit to the lifelong practice of engaging critically with our learning, as well as with both internal and external frameworks of thought. As Angela Davis reminds us, we cannot accept “what is” simply because it’s “what is”. Reimagining entire systems requires an ongoing, intentional process of challenging our own perceptions, dismantling harmful norms, and reconstructing the world one step at a time. It is a slow crawl, but we do not move alone. We stand on the shoulders of those who came before us, learning from their struggles and insights. Our duty is not just to inherit their knowledge but to push it further–to become even more radical, more fearless, and more dangerous.

Decentralization

To establish a shared understanding, decentralization involves actively shifting power from a single central authority to multiple, more distributed entities.

As mentioned earlier, racist ideas exist to help protect and legitimize systems of unequal power. These ideas often become social norms–unwritten rules about what is acceptable or expected in society. Those who hold power have the most influence over these norms–and, in turn, help maintain their own positions of authority.

For white people, this means we often benefit from and help maintain a system where our position is dominant. Because norms shape how society functions, having the power to influence them means having the power to shape society itself. Our positions of power establish beauty standards based on whiteness and communication norms centered on “Standard American English,” reinforcing a system where white norms are seen as the default and superior, marginalizing non-white identities.

This is why social movements reclaim harmful words and push against conventional norms that limit autonomy, like gender. If movements can reclaim things like slurs, they can rehumanize their identities and combat marginalization.

Our responsibility as white people is to use our power to actively break down these hierarchies. Because we hold privilege in a system built around whiteness, we often exist in a world that reflects and affirms our experiences. This alignment can make it easy to remain unaware of the white-centered lens through which we view the world–a lens we often mistake as neutral. But this narrow perspective not only renders the experiences of others invisible; it also drowns out their voices. By assuming our view is the default, we erase the realities of those who are marginalized by the very systems we benefit from. This is where the concept of positionality becomes critical. As white people, we lack the lived experience that comes from being on the receiving end of structural oppression. Without this lived experience, we should not be at the head of the fight involved in combatting these structures. We need to seek out POC voices and perspectives to support and guide us in this fight. As allies, it’s crucial to remain aware of the power dynamics within our society and recognize how our actions may inadvertently reinforce them.

That means our role is not to lead, but to follow–to take a supporting position and walk behind the leadership of marginalized communities, respecting the paths they carve. When we use our privilege to amplify their voices, we shift away from reinforcing hierarchies. The goal is not to raise ourselves or any one group above another, but to help dismantle the hierarchy itself–replacing dominance with equity and control with collective power.

This last part is crucial. Many white people turn away from anti-racist ideology because they think it vilifies whiteness–that decentrilization means an erasure of white voices and a demand for constant self-loathing and guilt around their identity. When I read my first book about white privilege, Between the World and Me by Tanasi Coates, I was hit by the heavy feeling of guilt and self-hatred that stemmed from the depth of suffering and injustice that has taken place by white hands. As a white person, I can speak to the deep self-hatred that stems from my whiteness, but I can also speak to the feelings that come from taking action.

I am not suggesting that white people should take up the struggle in search of atonement or relief from their guilt. Performative allyship centers the struggle on whiteness and is in bad faith. Instead, I am making the distinction that anti-racist ideology calls on white individuals to embrace accountability, not shame. The feelings of self-loathing and ostracization from the struggle generally arise when white people feel othered from the struggle due to complacency. When we engage in education and decentralization in an honest and sincere way, we begin to find our place as allies. Through action, I began to understand that my whiteness in itself is not what is to be hated, but instead, the aspects of it that uphold oppressive structures.

It is important to remember that anti-racism is a fight against the systems of racism, not individuals. Racists uphold the structures of racism; they are not in themselves the root of racism. Taking control of how we choose to engage with these structures is a deeply empowering experience; it enables us to begin reshaping what whiteness can represent. There are very distinct gaps between the values we believe in and the roles that we play in upholding inequalities.

The irony of centering the white perspective in this section about decentralization is not lost on me. I speak to white people now because this moment—this step—is critical. Too often, anti-racism is misinterpreted as anti-white, when in truth, it is anti-oppression. My intention here is to challenge that misconception and call white people into a deeper sense of responsibility. Privilege can be an intoxicating comfort, one that dulls our urgency and delays our action. I fear that privilege is too strong for many white people to take the crucial step of earning a place in the struggle.

Again, anti-racism does not ask us to hate ourselves, but to hold ourselves accountable. It asks us to confront the systems we uphold and reshape what whiteness means by aligning it with liberation, not dominance. The work is not to erase ourselves, but to remake ourselves. And I pray we have the courage, the compassion, and the moral clarity to begin.

Action

Action, as I see it, comes in two forms: immediate action and structural action. Earlier, I spoke to how we are responsible for dismantling the norms that create hierarchy, but this in itself does not address structural racism–nor do the practices of demonstrating, self-educating, and educating others. You can teach someone about systemic racism, but unless power and resources are redistributed and unless institutions are structurally transformed, the root causes remain untouched. Ibram Kendi reminds us that when we seek to change individuals without changing the structure itself, we are essentially treating the symptoms without treating the disease.

With all that being said, dismissing the importance of immediate action is ignorant. In Pathologies of Power, Paul Farmer laments how many in the human rights community hesitate to move from principle-based activism to direct aid, failing to address the urgent needs of those they defend. Getting in the mud and doing the immediate work is better than getting caught up in how we can best serve communities. In fact, immediate action is how we listen to and work with the communities in the first place, giving us the insights to do the systemic work. If we make policy changes that we think will help communities without engaging directly with them, that systemic change will not be rooted in anti-racist ideology. More applicably, if we do not do the immediate work of educating ourselves through POC voices, we cannot begin to effectively push up against the racist structures in our schools and work environments.

Thus, the work we do must be both independent and collective, both immediate and long-term. We as a society must demand redistributions of power, work toward policy changes, and engage in anti-racist research, while also doing the immediate work of taking action in our daily lives to challenge racist ideas, support anti-racist perspectives, and transform our immediate environments.

You don’t need to wait to be at a certain place in your understanding of anti-racism to take action. Action and learning go hand in hand to help create better allyship. Taking action to create structural change can happen in any place and time in your life. Structures of inequality seep into all aspects of our lives, and once we begin to identify them, we can combat them. Create a small coalition to push for DEI programs in your schools, clubs, and jobs; start a book club centered on POC voices with your white friends; commit to diversifying what you consume, like podcasts and films; and speak up in everyday situations. Most importantly, try to consistently evaluate the spaces you occupy through an anti-racist lens. Once your perceptions begin to shift, the need to take action will ultimately arise. Change starts painfully slowly, but the longer you stick to it, the more momentum it carries.

Reimagination

A butterfly’s metamorphosis is a powerful metaphor for change. During this process, the body completely breaks down, and the digestive system, airway, and brain are restructured and recycled. For it to fly, entire systems must be replaced. In a similar way, shifting away from oppressive systems like capitalism, racism, sexism, and classism requires a fundamental reimagining of our world. This reimagination demands that we reconsider core concepts such as justice, ownership, safety, intelligence, health, and the very structure of the nation-state. It’s about reimagining a world without the systems of thought and language that maintain oppression. As I’ve mentioned before, our understanding of the world is shaped by the words and definitions we have available to us. When those words have oppressive roots, our reality becomes limited by those same oppressive structures. Real change, therefore, starts with replacing these concepts.

Take gender, for example. Gender diversity has existed across cultures for centuries, but the movement to reimagine gender beyond a rigid binary has gained significant momentum in the past century. These changes show us that challenging and dismantling oppressive systems is not as theoretical as we may think. It’s happening. It’s possible. But the act of reimagining should not and cannot end in our minds. While reimagination begins with our awareness, it must eventually be embodied through our communities. Just like the butterfly’s transformation, this change can’t be a fleeting idea but a reshaping of the foundation itself.

This transformation is a struggle needed for all of humanity. Antiracism is not just about racial justice but justice for all. Bell hooks advocated for a justice that existed beyond borders: we cannot isolate fights like gender equality and racial equality because of the interconnected nature of different forms of oppression. These systems of oppression work by concentrating power and resources in the hands of the few by denying them to others. By isolating movements like the feminist movement and the Black Power movement of the 1960s, they deny the intersectionality of oppression and perpetuate the system by elevating themselves through the dehumanization of Black women. To resist effectively, we must reject fragmentation and embrace solidarity. We need to lock arms across differences, recognize our shared struggle, and name the true enemy. This fight cannot be won without the collective commitment of the people.

Some may question if love is radical enough to catalyze change, but I believe that if we want to build something collective and lasting, love is not only essential, but revolutionary. This love is not sentimental or passive; it’s the kind of love that bell hooks called a practice of freedom, and what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. referred to as agape–a selfless, unconditional love rooted in justice and the recognition of shared humanity. This love is intertwined with power, much like maternal or communal care. I see radical love as a transformative, active force that refuses to ignore injustice and instead confronts it with truth, solidarity, and deep care.

When I think of radical love, I think of mutual aid, abolition, liberation theology, and global liberation struggles–from the Zapatistas to the Black Panthers, from emergency response rooms in Sudan to Indigenous land defense. These movements teach us that love is not a distinction from the struggle; it is the struggle. Love in this context is what nourishes collective survival and builds the world beyond prisons, beyond borders, beyond capitalism.

We must remember that the struggle is not simply against individuals; it is against systems that organize life through domination. While individuals and institutions enact immense harm, abolitionist thinkers remind us that focusing on punishment and revenge only reproduces the same violence we seek to dismantle. At its core, those harming often do so within systems designed to dehumanize. This is not about excusing violence, but about refusing to build a future on the same logic of disposability. We must strive toward the well-being of both the oppressed and the oppressor. Not by centering the comfort of the powerful, but by dismantling the systems that corrupt us all.

Hatred may feel like clarity, but it binds us to the same punitive structures we’re trying to undo. When we lead with love, we disrupt cycles of domination and invite healing. Love doesn’t mean neutrality–it means committing to justice without losing our humanity. It means refusing the false choice between accountability and compassion.

Radical love fuels collective action. It clarifies our purpose–not only to resist the violence around us but to build new, liberatory alternatives. Much like how love is active, Ruth Wilson Gilmore reminds us, abolition is about presence, not absence. It’s about building life-affirming institutions that make prisons, policing, and exploitation obsolete. Choosing love is choosing to build that presence. Every act of solidarity, care, resistance, and refusal is a step closer to the world we deserve–a world not built on punishment and profit, but on dignity, interdependence, and freedom.

A Caring Sexual Ethic

Skyler Outler — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 10:41:32 -0800

Art by Trenity

A Caring Sexual Ethic Skyler Outler

University of North Florida

Introduction:

The goal of this paper is to abandon the traditional approach to sexual ethics that focuses on justifying sexuality, sexual deviances, and perversions by highlighting sameness in their attempt to be ethical. This reduction to sameness neglects the social aspect of ethical reasoning and decision-making, as it ignores the relationality we have with others and rarely tasks us to be good towards them. Through this, it fails to provide a practical ethical framework. Instead, the ethic that I am proposing values the alterity of others, prioritizes care, and recognizes the relational aspect of our sexual experiences. This revision of sexual ethics will first go in depth about the current sexual ethic and its downfalls. Then I will combine Feminist Care Ethics with Emmanuel Levinas’s concept of the “Other” in Totality and Infinity to create a sexual ethic that focuses on “A relationship with the Other that does not result in divine or human totality, that is not a totalization of history but the idea of infinity.” (Levinas 52). Through this, I will provide real-life examples and applications of this ethic. I hope this reformulation doesn’t just bring improvement and flourishing in our sex lives, but also challenges us to be good to one another, not despite our differences, but in recognizing them.

Analysis of Current Ethical Approach:

The current ethical outlook follows the Ethics of Justice approach that relies on universal norms based on rights, fairness, and equality. The Ethics of Justice’s main focus is upholding an individual’s rights through the universality of principles. This follows the ethics of Kant, Rawls, and other philosophers who base morality and ethical decision-making solely on reason and an ideal model of humanity. This ethical approach is solely concerned with the rights that a person has, and views ethical decision-making as “Conflicts between egoistic individuals’ interests on the one hand, and universal moral principles on the other.” (Held 12). Furthermore, this outlook views personhood to be identical as it is based on universality. Even though this attempts to promote equal treatment, it ignores the nuances and complexities that should be considered in ethical decision-making involving others. This Ethic attempts to promote equality strictly through laws and rules has downfalls such as objective blindness. This ignores that person’s unique circumstances and only acknowledges the rights violated. The American Judicial system prides itself on this, with the depiction of Lady Justice with a blindfold over her eyes. I find that this illustrates the valuing of laws and principles over the people to whom they are applied and ignores the effects of these laws. The ethics of justice have similarities to the first generation of human rights and can be seen to be founded in them. (Faust). The first generation of human rights protects individuals civilly, and politically, and like justice is applied universally. This universality strips away the characteristics that make up a human identity and views them solely as a legal subject. In this, it aids justice’s ability to enforce laws but the inability to sustain them, as it ignores the underlying causes of injustice and instances of inequality that can still be present even with these laws in place. Justice is shortsighted and it shows in laws and policies that don’t fix the root of issues. Justice prioritizes universal principles and rights of individuals, by doing so it ignores the relationality and mutual concern for the other. Feminist Care Ethics

Feminist Care Ethics is transformative as it lifts the veil of blindness from people’s eyes since it views people as “relational and interdependent, not rational agents of the perspective of justice and rights.” (Held. 72). In this ethical approach, care is a value and a practice. (Held 37, 39). Care is a value that we should strive to have and exhibit in our actions and practices, such as sensitivity, trust, mutual consideration, attentiveness, and responsiveness. The values of care are seen in caring practices, as they use these values to build relationships with others that are concerned with “The effectiveness of its efforts to meet needs, but also with the motives with which care is provided. It seeks good caring relations.” (Held 36). Caring practices don’t just uphold the values of care but are used to cultivate caring relations. Viewing care in this way dismisses the notion of care as a natural disposition and leads to the idea of care as a practice or skill that is perfected through caring relationships. Caring relationships are filled with mutual consideration and concern for others, as they often are in friendship, marriage, siblingship, parenting, and citizenship. For example, watching a movie in a public theater with others relies on practicing proper movie theater etiquette, such as not being on our phones, talking during the movie, or acts of PDA. This is a caring relationship as we are exhibiting the values of care such as consideration and sensitivity to others in this shared space through movie theater etiquette. This does not mean that care is something that you achieve once and stop practicing as relations never cease to exist. Relations are the way we live and form bonds with others without them society would fall.

I understand care as a practice and value through Aristotelian ethics, with the concepts of Energeia and Hexis. Energeia or “being at work” is working towards the “active condition” or Hexis, which is where the values of care are demonstrated in caring relationships with others. (Sachs 2002). The relational self within the ethics of care recognizes the underlying connections that are present between people even among strangers. “Those who conscientiously care for others are not seeking primarily to further their own individual interests; their interests are intertwined with the persons they care for. Neither are they acting for the sake of all others or humanity in general; they seek instead to preserve or promote an actual human relation between themselves and particular others.” (Held 12). Whether it is strangers in a movie theater, patrons in a store, or a loved one, these should be relations filled with trust, mutual consideration, and sensitivity.

The Two Sides of Totalization

*Emmanuel Levinas was unlike most philosophers of his time as he placed ethics as the “first philosophy” Levinas believed that the ethical duty that we have to others precedes the traditional philosophical pursuit of knowledge, such as ontology. In *Totality and Infinity, *Levinas’s ethics is heavily concerned with the “Infinite Other” The Other is infinite in the sense that they are not graspable physically or comprehensible intellectually, and in attempts to have and understand them, we are getting further away from actually doing so. This causes us to want them more, and what he calls “Metaphysical Desire”, this is “desire without satisfaction which, precisely understands the remoteness, the alterity, and the exteriority of the other.”(Levinas 34). Through things like war and ontology we are “grasping being out of nothing or reducing it to nothing, removing from its alterity” (Levinas 44). This is what Levinas calls totalization. Through totalization, we view people as objects and concepts to be understood, not for a better understanding of the other, but to utilize them. This is what I call totalization through possession, the way that one sees the objects in the world as things to be used and dominated “Neutralize the other who becomes a theme or an object, appearing that is, taking its place in the light- is precisely his reduction to the same.” (Levinas 43). “The reduction to the same” is seeing the other as a “means to an end,” meaning that when we physically touch or intellectually understand the other, we are doing so like using a pencil to write with or to break down a scientific concept to understand it. Levinas uses the example of ontology to make this point even further stating, “For the things, the work of ontology consists in approaching the individual not in its individuality but in its generality” (Levinas 44). Through totalization, we are obliterating their alterity, which reduces them to their utility. The Ethics of Justice views people similarly, through laws that uphold universal principles and rights. “Truth, which should reconcile person, here exists anonymously, universality presents itself as impersonal, and this is another inhumanity.” (Levinas 46). The Ethics of Justice has its foundation in laws, rights, and universality in which we understand ourselves and others. This foundation creates a distance between one another and ignores the other’s radical alterity.

Levinas talks about totalization in another way, in terms of relation. In this conception of the word, totalization is how we interact with objects and others in the world. “This refusal of the concept drives the being that refuses it into the dimension of interiority. It is out of home with itself. The I is the mode in which the break up of totality, which leads to the presence of the absolutely Other, is uncertainly accomplished.” (Levinas 118). This is how we should view others, not as an object through totality, but as a subject through alterity. Furthermore, we don’t seek to control the objects in the world but, simply enjoy them in their fundamental state of being. Levinas states, “Enjoyment is the ultimate consciousness of all the contents that fill my life- it embraces them.” (Levinas111). In this fundamental enjoyment of life, we depend on the “good soup” or the satisfaction of our needs that give us nourishment and this is how we enter into a relationship with the world and the Other. This “living from” creates the containment of the “I” or the separation of the “I” that allows the possibility for there to be an “Other” which is exterior to me. Totalization through relation is the interdependent and relational aspect that is discussed in Feminist Care Ethics. The need for the other is to have this sense of “I” that helps us know who we are. This relation to the Other happens in the shared world that the “I” is based on and where the other challenges the possessions of totalization. This conception of totalization views the Other as infinite, stating, “To think infinite, the transcendent, the stranger, is hence not to think an object.” (Levinas 49). Furthermore, the Other is filled with alterity that we acknowledge and uphold by being in a relationship with them while simultaneously experiencing our fundamental state of being.

Totalization and Possession within the Ethics of Justice

The Ethics of Justice is the current ethical outlook that is seen through the narrow lens of generalization and universality. An example of this is the “treat others the way you want to be treated” mindset that many of us were taught as young children. Through this, we learned to treat others in a way that upholds their rights because we wouldn’t want our rights violated. For example, if someone is playing with a toy that I want to play with, I shouldn’t take it from them because I wouldn’t want them to do that to me. We all have the right to play with our toys and this should be respected and upheld. If our rights are violated in any way we can do the same to them, and the mindset of doing good to others is gone. Even though this is meant to ensure fairness between others, it lacks the actual understanding, care, and vulnerability that is required for caring relations and long-term human and social development. I see gender roles as a form of generalizations as they reinforce strict rules and boundaries that make us feel obligated to act a certain way according to these strict rules. This generalization of the other through gender also mirrors the Ethics of Justice and the aspect of totalization through possession that Levinas described. We do not see the Other but understand them like a concept that I can apply ideas, rights, and rules that allow me to view and treat them as an object. To illustrate these points further, I am going to use the pro-life argument to illustrate the Ethics of Justice, how the recent overturning of Roe V. Wade in the American Supreme Court has a general and totalizing view of women, and how this has impacted the way we view and treat the Other in the context of a sexual ethic.

The aspect that separates pro-life and pro-choice is the understanding of care and justice. Pro-lifers view the issue of abortion through the lens of rights as the most important thing is the “right” of the fetus and they believe that pro-choicers are against the right to life. Although I am pro-choice myself, I am not against the right to life, but I am against putting the “rights” of the fetus over the care that is required for the survival of the fetus and eventual child, which is not going to be provided by anyone else besides the person in gestation or the people raising the child after birth. In Coming to Life, Bertha Alvarez Mannien writes an essay on the dichotomy between pro-life and pro-choice. She includes the philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson and her article A Defense of Abortion with her infamous violin and kidney example, quoting the article, “I am not arguing that people do not have a right to life…. I am arguing only that a right to life does not guarantee having either a right to be given the use of or a right to be allowed continued use of another person’s body— even if one needs it for life itself. So the right to life will not serve the opponents of abortion in the very simple and clear way in which they seem to have thought it would.” (Mannien 171-192). This “right” that is argued for, that a fetus has to my body for development and eventual birth can be seen as totalization through possession, as I am reduced to my body and how it can benefit the fetus. In this view, pregnancy is something that is required of women’s bodies and ignores the array of emotions that pregnancy can have. These emotions and feelings are what will create relations between the fetus and the person, which will manifest in practices of care such as taking prenatal vitamins, not smoking, drinking, recreational drug use, etc. It is through these practices of care that the fetus will be taken care of. Care allows the longevity and sustainability of rights, laws, and in this case, life. Furthermore, pro-lifers have their argument in this generalization of rights that view pregnancy through a narrow lens that lacks care, and emotion which will sustain the well-being of the child.

The overturning of Roe v. Wade is sending a message about women, gender roles, and sexual scripts that go along with them. Typical gender roles depict men as logical creatures who are in positions of power and control in and outside the home. Whereas women are nurturing, submissive, and primarily only hold power in the domestic sphere. People who believe in strict gender roles believe that these roles compliment each other and create harmony within relationships. In actuality, they create transactional relationships that lack actual connection as they place value and success of a relationship on the performance of gender roles. Understanding others primarily through their identities such as gender, race, sexuality, etc. enables one to control them according to these social constructs. In this way, we view each other not in terms of relationality, but utility. Katherine Angel’s Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again illustrates this, as she describes stereotypes about male and female desire. Male desire, she describes as, “Permanently up for it, constantly asserting libido and achieving conquest”( Angel 67). Female desire is “An exchange of a good, a resource that women “give up”, risking a loss of value to themselves in the process, in exchange for something they value more” (Angel 64). According to these stereotypes, men are slaves to their desires, naturally sexually driven, and see sex as a way to unleash their patriarchal power onto women. In contrast, women’s sexual desires are motivated by non-sexual reasons, such as intimacy, procreation, and obligation. As we are fed these gendered ideas of desire; we internalize, act upon, and reinforce them, even if they do not align with our actual desires. Through these gendered ideas, we do not have an open relationship with the Other, as we are afraid that it may expose us to pleasures that don’t align with the traditional gendered ideas of femininity and masculinity. Through this, we view the other not as a transcendent being, but as a way to fulfill our gender roles. This is why I consider gender roles to be a generalization of the other, that makes us view others through their utility and makes sex an act of obligation that upholds gender roles for men and women to reinforce and follow. Through this, sex loses vulnerability, the thing that makes pleasure a possibility as it gives us the chance to see the Other and exposes us to our transcendence as well. Angel states. “Feelings, sensations, and desires can lie dormant until brought into being by those around us. We need to be able to allow this to; we need not fight so hard against our own porousness, our own malleability. (Angel 113-114). The Other can make our desires known to us, but if we aren’t vulnerable and allow a relation to form this can never happen. Through vulnerability, we can fully understand and experience our desires.

Black Feminist Critique

Levinas introduces the concept of recollection, which is stepping back from the world and trying to understand life outside the dwelling. Stating “Deginates a suspension of the immediate reactions the world solicits in view of a greater attention to oneself, one possibilities and the situation.” (Levinas 154). Levinas further explains that this is made possible through, not the transcendental other that commands us through language, but through this lack of language, which he calls the “female alterity” Levinas goes on to describe female alterity as “a delightful lapse in being, and the source of gentleness itself” (Levinas 155). “And the empirical absence of the human being of “feminine sex”(Levinas 158). This lack of language and absence of being creates a field of intimacy and gentleness, which makes recollection possible. Levinas’s female alterity goes against his philosophy as it embodies Seyla Benhabib’s concept of the “generalized other” that views people through universalistic moral theories that are seen in the work of Kant, Rawls, and others who have an abstract and general view of humanity as autonomous and independent beings. Within these theories, women are excluded in numerous ways. One way is the metaphor that describes humans as mushrooms that have just sprung from the earth, this denies the woman’s role in reproduction. Women are excluded as they are objects that do not define themselves but are defined by men, the subjects. This is a lack of self-definition which can be seen as a way of silencing women and can be seen in Levains’s conception of female alterity that characterizes women as being without language. This silencing of women places women in the private sphere which is characterized as “the sphere of care and intimacy, is unchanging and timeless.” (Benhabib 484). This view creates a generalization of women as being the ultimate caregiver who occupies the private sphere through being timeless and unchanging. Women are not just defined by men but are defined by what they are not: Men. Women are “defined by a lack- the lack of autonomy, the lack of independence, the lack of the phallus. The narcissistic male takes her to be just like himself, only his opposite.”(Benhabib 484). If women occupy the private sphere, men occupy the public sphere, and if the private sphere is unchanging, the public sphere is progressive. Furthermore, Levians’s concept of female alterity embodies Benhabib’s generalized other and reeks of misogyny and sexism.

Levinas’s female alterity paints the idea of caring and nurturing to be a natural female disposition and this is present within Western philosophy called the “Eternal Feminine” which describes women as being naturally caring and nurturing stating “Women possess an immutable nature that makes them fit for some things and unfit for others.” (Bergoffen 121). This is a generalization that places women in subservient roles to their male partners and family while men are fit for roles outside of the domestic sphere. Through this, women become the primary caregivers of children and are expected to be self-sacrificial to the needs and wants of their children and partners. They are rewarded with the title of “supermom” for doing so. This idea presents mothers as otherworldly beings who can do any and everything and cannot do any wrong. She is the “archetypal female who is both a career woman and a housewife and whose to-do list spans cooking, cleaning, parenting, earning a substantial paycheck and sexually satisfying her husband — all without a hair out of place.” (New York Times). This title puts women on a moral pedestal and forgets the humanness of women and mothers and their fall from this is brutal, and harsh and is visible in public reaction when women commit crimes of abuse to their children. Popular family vlogger Ruby Franke of 8passengers was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison for child abuse along with her business partner Jodi Hildebrandt. Father Kevin Franke, who was separated from his wife during this time had no contact with the children and was shocked about what his wife did stating, “I’ve chosen to trust my wife with the children,” Franke told police later that “I’ve had no reason to believe or think there was anything going on.”(The Salt Lake Tribune). This father being clueless about the safety and well-being of his children is not uncommon, as most would assume that their children are safe with their mother, not because she is a good person, but because it is believed that a mother’s affection for her children is natural. In Dr. Sarah LaChance’s book Mad Mothers, Bad Mothers and What Would Good Mothers Do she quotes Nel Nodding to describe this detached feeling as the principle-oriented morality that is aligned with the “ethics of the father—“the detached one” Nodding uses the example of Abraham in the bible being able to kill Isaac due to this, and it follows the stereotype of men and fathers having this detached moral approach and women naturally possessing care stating “But for the mother, for us, this is horrendous” (LaChance Adams 43). This isn’t true just in these extreme cases of abuse but, in everyday cases of childrearing with men using weaponized incompetence when it comes to being caregivers. Weaponized incompetence is “the deliberate feigning of incompetence to avoid certain tasks or responsibilities” (Forbes). For example, fathers act like they don’t know how to change their child’s diaper or do it wrong so they don’t have to do it. This is also seen in the form of husbands praising their wives for being able to do it all and saying “I could never do what my wife does” This is an example of that pedestal of being otherworldly and untouchable that we put women, and in particular mothers on and it makes emotional labor seem impossible for men to do. However, the truth is that men can do what their wives do but they don’t want to. Furthermore, I find that this pedestal leads to ignoring a mother’s needs, wants, pain, and suffering and disguises it as something that is just a part of motherhood. An example of this is mothers having an empty stocking on Christmas day. A TikTok video went viral when a husband realized that his wife’s stocking had been empty for the past ten years. Initially, he thought that it was an extra stocking, and he asked his wife she replied “I guess Santa forgot about me” and laughed it off. The mother in that video responded to the comments criticizing her partner, saying “I know it looks like I was sad sitting off to the side with no gifts surrounding me, but I wasn’t sad at all,” Aubree says. “I was doing what most moms do, which is just enjoying my kids being happy on Christmas morning.” (TodayShow). This is true for most mothers, watching their children, partner, and even the dog enjoy their Christmas presents while they find joy in their excitement over the gifts they got for others. This is not about gift giving, it is about giving care and the expectation of mothers to do it and it not being reciprocated back to them. This also shows the invisibility that mothers go through.

*In Colonizing Bodies and Minds: Gender and Colonialism by *Oyeronke Oyewumi, states the following “More specifically, in the Yoruba case, females became subordinated as soon as they were “made up” into women- an embodied and homogenized category. Thus, by definition they became invisible.” (Oyewumi 153). I find that this invisibility is because of the pedestal that we put women and mothers on and comments like, “I could never do what my wife does”, or “A woman’s work is never done.” are what lead to ignoring a woman’s pain and suffering and disguising it as a badge of honor of motherhood. This invisibly is seen so often in women’s lives starting from early childhood. Pretending not to cry when a boy pushes them on the playground, covering their bodies because they are told that it is distracting to the boys and male teachers in their class, or not taking a job offer so they don’t make their male partner feel inferior. This invisibility for women is not uncommon and doesn’t start once they become mothers and wives but is conditioned into them since they are young, so once they become wives and mothers it is not questioned, but accepted by them. The sentiment that is present in the term “supermom” can also be seen in the phrase “Strong, Independent, Black Women.” this is the expectation of black women to be the emotional support system for African American communities (as well as society’s mammy) in times of racial crisis, they are called to help with activism while facing misogynoir and discrimination within the black community and in the world. I see this as the emotional fetishization of black women. Just as black women are fetishized for their bodies, they are fetishized for the emotional support that they can provide. Just as “supermom’s” lack of self-care is celebrated and admired, a black woman’s constant emotional and physical labor is labeled as being “resilient” while this resilience is seen as being “hard”, and not feminine. However, many black women are trying to claim their femininity back and rejecting the “strong, black women” stereotype by living a “soft life,” a life without stress, centering self-care and wellness. However, the original intention behind the soft life movement has gone in a different direction that has resulted in divine feminine coaches teaching women how to attract wealthy male partners or “high-value men” to obtain a life of material wealth. YouTuber Shera Seven is one of many dating coaches who teach women how to get a wealthy partner. When a woman asked what zodiac sign to avoid while dating, Shera said, “The negative bank account sign. The minus sign.”(Vox.com). Even though this is toxic, Shera Seven is mild compared to many on the internet. There are male podcasters such as Andrew Tate, The Whatever podcast, and the Fresh and Fit podcast that spew harmful rhetoric that describes a high-value woman as being “hot, but also possesses a laundry list of other qualities that make her ‘wife material,’ from dressing modestly to not being “ran-through,” meaning she hasn’t had sex with very many people, to be financially independent and educated — but not too educated and financially independent to intimidate the man. (Vox.com). They believe that second-wave feminism and its push for women to get educated, high-paying jobs, be financially independent, and be sexually liberated masculinizes women and turns men off, as they want their feminine counterparts. Through this, a soft life is living in your feminine energy to get a “high-value man” who will become the financial breadwinner, and live a life that requires the woman to be a subservient wife and mother, as this is her “divine” energy. This type of rhetoric creates a pipeline to right-wing politics that vouches for nuclear family structures, and traditional gender roles. Divine feminine, dating coaches and people who support and follow their ideas value the two separate spheres, the domestic sphere that they believe women should occupy and the public sphere that men occupy, and don’t want them to overlap with one another. These spheres have rigid boundaries that one has to stay in because if they don’t patriarchy and capitalism will not survive. One woman accounts her journey from leaving corporate America and describes how she went to college, got a good-paying job, and even received awards for being a top seller. However, she describes that while experiencing this massive success at work, she also experienced negative things, such as acne, lack of sleep, and hormonal changes. She blames this on the fact that she was living in her “masculine energy” She is now a lot happier living in her “feminine energy” working as a social media manager and describes her relationship dynamic with her husband as “letting him take on the reins”. (Michelle Zoltan[@michelle] TikTok, 18 Sep. 2023). I find what this creator was experiencing while working in Corporate America wasn’t her living in masculine energy but was the effects of a capitalist society that cares more about the product and productivity of its workers instead of their wellbeing. When this type of rhetoric is given to black women in the form of living a soft life, it is just a repackaging of white supremacist talking points that are rooted in anti-blackness. It isn’t liberating as it appears to help them escape the “strong, independent black women” stereotype but instead, it intensifies the emotional labor of black women as it demands that they have to give this to others, as doing so is living in their ‘feminine nature’

Sex as the “good soup”

Our sexual experiences and interactions are a reflection of how we view ourselves and others, and the ethics of justice have made our fundamental understanding of sex strictly on consent. Consent is giving permission for something to happen or to be done to you. Through this, consent presents our desires to be black or white. But what about the in-between, or gray areas? We can say no in the middle of sex, but what about saying yes after that? Consent presented this way has made us understand our answer to be final, but what if it isn’t? This rigid understanding of consent is not strong enough to account for this, and shouldn’t be our foundational understanding of sex. Katherine Angel agrees with this stating, “This is not a reason to dismiss consent; it is a reason to question the limits of its consent and ask whether the burden of sexual ethics should be placed on consent, rather than, say, conversation, mutual exploration, curiosity, uncertainty.”(Angel 113). Angel’s approach challenges our fundamental understanding of sex that is based on the typical understanding of consent that views people as autonomous legal individuals who potentially have to protect themselves from others, but through a relational understanding that doesn’t see our uncertainty as a vulnerability that can be taken advantage of, but the thing that makes pleasure possible with the other. With this approach, sex is not founded in the rigidity of consent, but the gray area and this doesn’t make navigating sex harder, but it requires us to implement the values of care in our sexual experiences such as attentiveness, mutual understanding, and vulnerability. In this, I propose a caring sexual ethic that won’t transform just our sex lives but other relationships, as we will see ourselves and others not strictly as a legal subject of consent, but ourselves in caring relationships with others. Like Levinas, feminist care ethics views people as relational beings stating, “The view of persons as embedded and encumbered seems fundamental to much feminists thinking about morality.” (Held 15). Levinas has many ideas that support feminist care ethics, such as the aspect of vulnerability that must be met with responsibility, stating, “To hear his destitution which cries out for justice is not to represent an image to oneself, but is to posit oneself as responsible, both as more and as less than the being that presents itself in the face.”(Levinas 215). I find that this aspect of responsibility that he mentions is what sustains caring relations and practices in feminist care ethics, as vulnerability is not a sign of weakness but a call from a transcendent Other that must be met with an ethical response that upholds their alterity. The way that this alterity is maintained is through relations, and not just any kind of relations, but caring relations. According to Levinas, relations are how we view each other as transcendent beings who we live among and experience life with, not in possession of. In this, we are in our fundamental state of being. Relations are the things that we live from, or the “good soup,” and gives us the ability to experience this stating, “Entering into relation with something other, this relation does not take form on the plan of pure being. Moreover, action itself, which unfolds on the plane of being enters into our happiness.” (Levinas 112-113). This action is what I consider to be care in caring relations described in feminist care ethics. “Requires mutuality and the cultivation of the ways of achieving this in the various contexts of interdependence in human life”(Held. 53). The relations that are a part of this “good soup” are caring relations as care is the action that sustains connections between others as care is a practice that involves being attentive and responsive to needs. Sex is a relation, but once care is prioritized, it can respond to vulnerabilities with an ethical response that upholds the Other’s alterity. It is through care that sex is a part of the “good soup” as through the acts and practices of care, such as being responsive, sensitive, and attentive, we view the Other as a transcendent being. Through this, we are experiencing the pleasure inherent in sex, and this is only possible through viewing the Other as relational to me, not an object that I use and discard, and not through a legal framework that solely sees them as a legal subject. Sex nourishes our lives, as the Other gives my desires and pleasure meaning and helps me understand them. Angel describes the same sentiment stating, “We are social creatures; and our desires have always emerged, from day one, in relation to those who care, or do not care, for us. Desire never exists in isolation. This is also what makes sex potentially exciting, rich, and meaningful” (Angel 39). It is through the Other that sexual desires can be realized, and pleasure can be experienced as they are an external point that gives my existence meaning.

A caring sexual ethic will transform the way that we approach sex, as sex will be seen as another caring relationship in our lives. Sexual desires will not be seen through the rigidity of consent or the lens of gender that upholds traditional ideas about masculinity and femininity but will be shaped by embracing each other and our ever-changing and evolving desires as transcendent beings. Slut shaming will also be obsolete, as the concept of gender is nothing compared to the infinite Other and their desires. Vulnerability will not be a sign of weakness but a call from the Other that leads us into a caring relationship that upholds their alterity and introduces us to our transcendence.

Bibliography

Abrahamson, Rachel Paula. “See a Dad Realize That His Wife Has Had an Empty Stocking … for 10 Years.” TODAY.Com, TODAY, 19 Dec. 2023, www.today.com/parents/moms/moms-empty-christmas-stocking-rcna130333.

Angel, Katherine. Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again: Women and Desire in the Age of Consent. Verso, 2022.

Aristotle, and Joe Sachs. Nicomachean Ethics. Focus Pub., 2001.

Benhabib, Seyla. “The Generalized and The Concrete Other: The Kohlberg-Gilligan Controversy and Moral Theory.” Feminist Ethical Theory.

Davis, Lisa Selin. “It’s 2021. Why Is ‘supermom’ Still Around?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 4 June 2021, www.nytimes.com/2021/06/04/us/supermom-work-family-kids.html.

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Jennings, Rebecca. “Why Is Dating Advice on TikTok so Sexist - and so Bleak?” Vox, 29 Nov. 2023, www.vox.com/culture/23978325/dating-advice-shera-seven-tiktok-sprinkle-sprinkle.

Levinas, Emmanuel. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Duquesne University Press, 2013.

Miller, Jorda. “Ruby Franke Case: Kevin Franke’s First Interview with Police after His Wife’s Arrest.” The Salt Lake Tribune, 24 Mar. 2024, https://www.sltrib.com/news/2024/03/24/ruby-franke-case-kevin-frankes/. Accessed 16 Apr. 2024.

Oyewumi, Oyeronke. “Chapter 4: Colonizing Bodies and Minds: Gender and Colonialism .” The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses, University of Minnesota Press, 1997, pp. 121–156.

Travers, Mark. “2 Ways ‘Weaponized Incompetence’ Might Be Hurting Your Relationship.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 20 Sept. 2023, www.forbes.com/sites/traversmark/2023/09/18/2-ways-weaponized-incompetence-might-be-hurting-your-relationship/.

Michelle Zoltan[@michelle]The soft girl era isn’t for everyone, but it is for me & it’s the best thing I have ever done for myself. Forever staying in my feminine. #softlife #softgirl #feminineenergy #masculineenergy. TikTok, 18 Sep. 2023 https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTLfGHdNf/

A New Threat of Terror: U.S. Conservatism and the Value of Nature

Skyler Outler — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 10:08:21 -0800

Art by Alexa Cruz-Abarca

Skyler Outler

Intro Feminist Philosophy

Dr. Bonnie Mann

17 October 2024

A new threat of terror: U.S Conservatism and the value of “Nature”

Introduction:

“Sex differences are established in natural law; that is, the content of that law is established by nature and therefore, presumably, has universal validity.” (Butler 29). This quote from Judith Butler is from their 2024 book *Who’s Afraid of Gender? *In this book, Butler talks about the anti-gender movement¹ that conservatives around the world are supporting. In this quote, Butler describes U.S. conservatism’s core value: “Natural Order.” This idea of a “natural order” is what U.S conservatives use for their justification against progressive policies. If something doesn’t align with the “natural order,” it is wrong. However, what is “the natural order” of society that they are referring to? According to the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank that wrote Project 2025,the natural order is “essential to a flourishing society, without it, everything will collapse.” Throughout the document, they point to things like DEI, Critical Race Theory, and Sex and Gender education as things that mess up this “natural order” of society. However, the change to the natural order that they are referring to is the changing social climate that is no longer championing white cis heteronormativity, or the White Phallocratic reality.

In this essay, I am going to illustrate how U.S. Conservative ideology is enacting terrorism on the American people through nationalism that is rooted in the idea of “Natural Social Order,” which coincides with upholding the white phallocratic reality. I am using Project 2025 and other documents and resources from the Heritage Foundation as my source of critique on American Conservatism. In particular, I will critique the notion of freedom that they are trying to protect as the Heritage Foundation attacks DEI initiatives in the Department of Education through book bans, conversations about gender, sexuality, and other attacks on diversity. I will carry out this critique through Emmanuel Levinas’ conception of freedom and responsibility to show the shortcomings of this narrow notion of freedom that Conservatives value.

White Phallocratic Reality and The Natural Order

The White Phallocratic reality is defined as male-centered. It correlates with the universal natural order of things, putting men as active agents who are the origins of truth and reality. In contrast, women are the inactive or passive agents who follow and support this version of truth and reality. This is described by Marilyn Frye as “Man understands his perception as simultaneously generating and being generated by a point of view. Insofar as the phallocratic scheme permits the understanding that women perceive at all, it features women’s perceptions as passive, repetitive of men’s perception, unauthorized.” (Frye 86-87). I am expanding this to include whiteness as well, as I believe that whiteness operates in the same way. Furthermore, the white phallocratic reality is what structures the natural order that conservatives are referring to and what they are trying to preserve. This idea of nature to conservatives is fundamental to their politics, as nature to them is described as follows: “That there exists an enduring moral order. That order is made for man, and man is made for it: human nature is constant, and moral truths are permanent.” (Heritage Foundation.com).

This idea of nature structured around the white phallocratic reality presupposes three elements: 1) The assumption that nature is also confined to a binary system, and anything outside of this binary is outside of nature. An example of this is the insistence that there are only two sexes, Male and Female, and no such thing as gender. 2) This strict binary setup presupposes nature to be hierarchical as well. 3) Nature is also universalized, which assumes that it is unchanging, constant, truthful, and ultimately good. Therefore, if you go against nature, you are rejecting the truth, you are rejecting goodness, and doing so leads to moral destruction and mayhem. You can see all three of these elements of nature working together in Project 2025 as they reiterate the importance of “Nature” through their issue with “Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity” in Title IX.

In Title IX, they claim that the Biden administration replaced or redefined sex, which in nature is fixed with “SOGI” (Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity). Replacing sex with this term is acting outside of nature, and the actions that follow this are putting the natural order at risk. Conservatives state that doing so has led us astray from nature, as policies “redefine” natural categories such as sex, through gender-inclusive language in federal policy. In Title IX, they claim that “replacing” sex with “SOGI” is putting women and girls in danger of being assaulted by men in locker rooms and bathrooms stating that doing such is not only unfair to women and girls, but threatens the right of free speech and religion to those who disagree with this “redefinition”². I find that their issue with SOGI in Title IX is not “redefining” but the expansion of such categories, as well as expanding these civil rights and protections to those who defy or reject the binary categorization of sex/gender.

Through this rejection of the binary system of sex, it challenges its notion of it as natural and the idea that it is fixed. Project 2025 states that the new administration is going to fix this by restoring the Title IX regulation with “Insistence that ‘sex’ is properly understood as a FIXED biological fact.” (Project 2025, 334). Furthermore, the Heritage Foundation and other conservative think tanks use the idea of nature as their guiding principle against inclusivity, as this is acting outside of nature and threatening the social order. The principles of variety and the principle of imperfectability are principles that underlie this notion of nature, as well as impose an element of hierarchy on nature and the idea that inequality is natural and creates a hierarchy and unfair power relations. In the principle of variety, they think equality is “narrowing uniformity” and “all other attempts at leveling must lead, at best, to social stagnation” (Kirk, Ten Conservative Principles). They believe that inequalities are just natural differences that must exist in a society. Adding to this sentiment is the principle of imperfectability, which expands the former principle even further, as trying to alleviate inequality is an act of utopian thinking, and not possible for a healthy, flourishing society. Stating: “To seek utopia is to end in disaster, the conservative says: We are not made for perfect things. All that we reasonably can expect is a tolerably ordered, just, and free society, in which some evils, maladjustments, and suffering will continue to lurk” (Kirk). This principle then goes on to state that “By proper attention to prudent reform, we may preserve and improve this tolerable order.” (Kirk). When conservatives say that they want to preserve or save American ideals, they want to preserve this “natural” order that is hierarchical, unfair and exploitative.

Nationalism

I find that this desire to preserve this natural order is rooted in nationalism, described by Charles Townsend, the author of Terrorism: A Very Short Introduction, describes nationalism as the “intolerance of diversity or plurality” (Townsend 78). Conservatives are not particularly trying to create an all-white nation, but a nation that upholds unfair power structures that are based on the subordination of many (women, people of color, LGBTQIA +) and the power of the few (white cis men). This desire to hold onto this structure of power is due to the current shift of society away from a White Phallocratic reality, and the way that they are responding to this changing shift is through tenets of nationalism. This can be seen in their fight against progressive education as they feel that it is radicalizing students and separating children from their parents. A way that they are trying to combat progressive education is through book bans. Conservatives use the term DEI interchangeably with CRT(critical race theory), social and emotional learning, and others to claim that progressive education is teaching children an ideology that treats people according to their identity, whether that is their race, gender, or sexuality, rather than as an individual human being.

This argument not only misleads and confuses the general public, as it entangles a multitude of different subjects, but it also loses the ability to be able to pinpoint the exact issue that is going on. In this section, I am going to talk about their attempt to save the education system through “Classical Education,” which aims to uphold a particular³ social order in America, and describe certain acts within classical education that are harmful. Classical Education Curriculum is focused on providing students with “ knowledge, wisdom, and virtue essential for appreciating, practicing, and preserving their American freedoms” (Cambre 2024). Through the teaching of liberal arts, classic books, religious traditions, and local traditions that allow parents to be the primary educators in their children’s lives, classical education is fighting against the progressive education curriculum. The teachings of the great books and religious traditions are what I am analyzing as the nationalist elements of classical education.

A way that classical education is fighting against progressive education is through book bans and formulating a curriculum solely on the Great Books list. The great books list are books that mostly consist of European and Western literature and philosophy that are considered essential to having a well-rounded education. The teachings of the great books focus on works by ancient, modern, and late philosophers, non-fiction writers, and literary works that have been influential in American society in terms of shaping norms and ethics. Teaching these books is not an issue in itself, but what the intentions behind them. The books they are reading on this list, and the values they are trying to implement through reading these books, are a concern. The Heritage Foundation’s vision for teaching great books is to “ground students in the good, the true, and the beautiful. Its highest aim is to form virtuous students grounded in the best of the Western canon.” (Roberts 2024).

The reading of these books is centered around religious faith, which reemphasizes the importance of “nature” as the highest good, and anything outside of that is a threat to our American ideals, such as freedom. They claim that progressive education rejects teaching the great books, and instead indoctrinates students with radical racial and gender ideologies and takes students away from the truth. This argument is not only exaggerated, but completely wrong as public schools that do not follow classical education curriculum, do teach great books, but recognize that their lack of diverse authors or content creates a limited scope of human history and experience, and in an attempt to reflect the times, and the life of students, they read other books alongside them to do so.

However, in recent years, book bans against literature that is reflective of students and current times have been rampant as they fear that students are being indoctrinated with CRT, gender ideology, and Marxist thought, and that targeted books are “radical”. The groups behind book bans are parent and community-led groups, such as Moms for Liberty, who believe that these books stray away from teaching American civics, history, and values. The books that they try to ban have “explicit sexual content, inflammatory racial references, mentioning of drugs and alcohol, and violence” (Moms for Liberty) among other things that they consider inappropriate for children who are in K-12 education. Some examples of this are *Intersection Allies, Because You Matter, and I Am Jazz, *just to name a few. The reason they give for the banning of these books is due to their content being “Controversial racial commentary, Alternative gender ideologies, and Controversial social commentary that promotes activism of young children” (Moms for Liberty).

The reason for banning these books is not only an exaggeration but a response to the shift away from the white phallocratic reality. These books have diverse characters, show children that sex and gender are not a natural binary system, racism is something that happens in different ways, and that white children can enact such behavior on others. It also gives those who have been existing in the foreground of the white phallocratic reality a voice to be seen and heard. By banning them, the white phallocratic reality is reestablished as the only way to understand life and experiences. The natural social order is also reestablished through the replacement of these books with the Western/European literature from the Great Books List. Furthermore, these book bans are an act of nationalism, as they are responding to the shift away from the white phallocratic reality, and are trying to reestablish it through the insistence on reading solely from the ‘great books” list, as these books reestablish the idea of not only what is “natural” but what is truthful and good in their eyes.

Terrorism: Fear of the Other

The attempts that are described above are how the upkeep of this natural order manifests into acts of terrorism against the American people. The terrorism that conservatives are enacting is enforcement terrorism, described as “violent actions used by states to maintain the status quo through the imposition of social control measures” (opj.gov). The violent actions that U.S. conservatives are taking are targeted at the LGBTQIA+ community. This includes undoing legislation that the Biden administration put in place that gave trans and gender non-conforming people protection from discrimination in the workplace, schools, and other public places. Conservatives feel that expanding anti-discrimination protection to trans and gender non-conforming people has “trampled women’s and girls’ athletic opportunities and due process on campus, threatened free speech and religious liberty, and eroded parental rights in elementary and secondary education regarding sensitive issues of sex.” (Project 2025 Pg, 33). This is also the same sentiment present in their fight against DEI, within school curricula. The issue that they have with trans and gender non-conforming individuals is that they represent the rejection of the gender binary system. The sex/gender binary system is a social category that helps us and others understand who we are, how to act, etc, and just like any other social category, it makes us intelligible to others.

People who do not conform to the sex/ gender binary are unintelligible, and being unintelligible, makes conservatives have to question themselves and their understanding of sex and gender, and how to interact and approach someone who defies such categories. The social category of sex is a tool of totality, totality described as “grasping being out of nothing or reducing it to nothing, removing from its alterity” (Lévinas 44). This concept of totality is from Emmanuel Levinas, and he thought that social categories were ways of totality, as they allowed us to view people as objects and concepts to be understood, not for a better understanding of them, but to dominate them. Through sex, we view people as a representation of either male or female, and we do not see them as the Other, as an infinite being, but as a concept that we must understand. Furthermore, trans and gender non-conforming people defy such categorization, and embody Levains concept of infinity, “To think infinite, the transcendent, the Stranger, is hence not to think an object. But to think what does not have the lineaments of an object is in reality to do more or better than think.”(Levinas 49). Furthermore, it is only through seeing the Other in terms of infinity that we come into relation with them.

Some of the acts of terrorism that conservatives are doing to gender non-conforming people are not respecting their chosen pronouns and rolling back protective legislation. This is stripping away not only who they are, but also preventing them from forming a relationship with them as well. Furthermore, Trans and gender non-conforming people defy such strict concepts of being and make conservatives feel the shift of a new potential social order that doesn’t rely on strict categories, but rejects them altogether. This new social categorization doesn’t rely on power dynamics, which threatens the white phallocratic reality’s legitimacy and its structure as a hierarchy. In Project 2025, they describe how they plan to tackle radical gender ideology in schools, stating, “No public institution may require an education employee or contractor to use a pronoun that does not match a person’s biological sex if contrary to the employee’s or contractor’s religious or moral convictions.” (Project 2025 346). This policy and others are acts of terrorism, as they strip the alterity of the Other, and reduce them to their sex that they may not identify with. Through viewing people strictly through the lens of sex, we are not seeing them as an infinite other that we are responsible for, but as a representation of a social category that allows us to see them as that, not beyond that.

Conservatives’ attack on DEI through book bans is an act of terrorism against people of color, as they are not only saying that talking about such topics through story time with young children is “inappropriate” but that those who identify with the characters or plot don’t matter, are unimportant. Essentially, they do not exist. This not only reestablishes the hierarchical structure around the White phallocratic reality, but it also emphasizes that those who are not white, straight, and cis cannot exist as the main character, but are always in the foreground as the “extra” within a world that revolves around helping advance the plot for others. It is through the legislation that legalizes this behavior that it is an act of enforcement terrorism, as it is using legality to force the subordination of others. It is instilling fear into teachers, government workers, parents, and students to uphold this system, and if not, they will be met with legal trouble. Through this, they are legalizing hurtful rhetoric and ideas as the norm. Overall, undoing protective legislation is an act of terrorism, as it is creating fear, as well as violence, to force subordination and justify it through policies that are founded in the “natural order”.

The price of freedom

Throughout Project 2025, talk about protecting American freedoms such as freedom of speech and religion, stating that the terms DEI, Gender, gender equality, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and other forms of inclusive language, “deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights.” (Project 2025, 5). Not only is this an exaggeration, but it also illustrates the true meaning of American freedom that Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation, and other conservative organizations are trying so desperately to preserve through book bans, policy changes, and education curriculum. Freedom in this sense is strictly individualistic and self-serving, as it only sees their wants, needs, or fears at risk of being taken away. It views people who are different as a threat to their freedom. Levinas’ conception of freedom differs from the conservative American conception of freedom, as it is not grounded solely within oneself, but within the Other, stating “To welcome the Other is to put in question my freedom” (Levinas 85). Without the Other, our freedom is arbitrary and has no sense of good or bad. In welcoming the Other, they put my freedom into question because of their infinity; this infinity does not allow me to control or dominate the Other, but to come into relation with them.

This conception of freedom requires us to question how personal freedom could harm the Other’s alterity, and how one can uphold the Other’s alterity through their actions. This is what I see in the reluctance towards trans and gender non-conforming people, as they represent existing outside the gender binary system, and it is through that that conservatives find themselves having this moment of hesitation or reflection on the meaning of these strict and narrowing categories of being. It is through trans and gender non-conforming people that their freedom of speech is put into question. This moment of hesitation makes conservatives question their freedom of speech as facing the Other makes them question how words and language can hurt or offend the Other. How can my words uphold their alterity? Conservative organizations have a very strong stance on the First Amendment and believe that any action that threatens it, even if it leads to discrimination, should be protected. In Project 2025, they describe how they plan to prohibit the FBI from combating the spread of misinformation and disinformation by Americans, stating “The United States government and by extension, the FBI have absolutely no business policing speech, whether in the public square, in print or online. The first amendment prohibits it.” (Project 2025 550). This plan is not only allowing potential misinformation and hate speech to be spread in the name of freedom, but it is also preventing this moment of reflection that lets people see others as a non-threat to their freedom, and not or in opposition to them, which is preventing a positive relation to form with others as well. When the First Amendment is used to spew hate, it is not being used to uphold others’ alterity, the other is not being considered at all as they are not seen in relation to them, but in strict opposition to them.

An argument that white parents have against DEI and CRT in schools is that it makes white children feel bad about themselves, and confess that they have white privilege. Even if schools were teaching CRT, the guilt that they would experience isn’t a bad thing that some make it out to be. White guilt happens whenever the topic of race comes up, and what these parents are fighting against, is essential for this country to heal its wounds from American slavery as it is this guilt that white children experience that allows them to question the systems of oppression that allow for racism to still prevail in this country. It is through white guilt that they will see that it is their responsibility, even if they did not inflict racism or oppression on people of color, they have a responsibility to dismantle it. It is through guilt that we are called to respond to the Other, which allows us to develop empathy, compassion, and responsibility for the Other, and white guilt is a perfect example of this. Levinas’ conception of freedom describes this as “Freedom then is inhibited, not as countered by a resistance, but as arbitrary, guilty, and timid; but in its guilt, it rises to responsibility”(Levinas 203). Freedom is not solely within oneself but is grounded within others.

The parents and policymakers who claim that CRT is causing their white children to feel this way are not fighting against CRT, but normal history lessons regarding race and American history. They claim that CRT has been implemented in their child’s curriculum after the 2020 BLM protests, along with the push for a more diverse curriculum that features Black authors and other marginalized voices. They claim that this is an act from the left to push a “woke” agenda onto their children. However, racism has always been an issue within the United States, and white people have always felt white guilt, but after 2020, it became very apparent how deeply entrenched the country is with racism and it made white people feel this collective sense of guilt, which led schools to address such issues within the school curriculum. The experience of White guilt is an essential part of the process of dismantling systemic racism. Without it, it allows systematic racism to continue, and parents and lawmakers are against real conversations about race because they know that this guilt can be used to do so. Therefore, freedom is not strictly found within ourselves, as the ability to do whatever we please. Freedom expresses the power and responsibility one has to others. This responsibility upholds the dignity, respect, the infinity of the Other. When we understand freedom through such an individual stance, it allows us to use it in ways that allow us to harm others, however, through viewing freedom as something that is grounded not strictly within ourselves, but by others, we will start to see others, not people that we need to protect ourselves from, but people that we live among and in relation with.

Conclusion

In this essay, I illustrated how U.S. Conservatism is enacting terrorism on the American people, through nationalism that is rooted in the idea of “Natural Social Order,” which coincides with upholding the white phaScriptError: TypeError: gdc.getDoc(…).getSelection is not a functionllocratic reality. I also elaborated on the notion of freedom that they are trying to protect by attacking the DEI initiatives in the Department of Education through book bans, conversations about gender, and other attacks on diversity by using Emmanuel Levinas’s conceptions of freedom and responsibility.

Call to Action: Infinite Possibilities

How can we fight against this threat to our democracy, that is, U.S. Conservatism, and its narrow conception of freedom? We need to rethink freedom and what it looks like. Freedom comes with great responsibility to the Other. We need to see the Other, not as a threat or as an obstacle to my freedom, but as something that gives my actions meaning, value, and ultimately a way to become a better person. We shouldn’t repress feelings of shame or guilt, but truly embrace them, as these emotions will make us strive for relationality and connection with others. Through these actions, and others, this is how we will not only fight against U.S Conservatism, but also experience the freedom, creativity, and the expansiveness that infinity can offer us.

                Works Cited

Townshend, Charles. Terrorism: A Very Short Introduction. 3rd ed., Oxford University Press, 2018.

“Ten Conservative Principles.” The Russell Kirk Center, 1 Dec. 2021, kirkcenter.org/conservatism/ten-conservative-principles/.

Frye, M. (1989). Chapter 5: To See and be Seen: The Politics of Reality. In Women, Knowledge, and Reality Explorations in Feminist Philosophy (2nd Edition, pp. 77–92).

Lévinas, Emmanuel. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority by Emmanuel Lévinas ; Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Translated by Alphonso Lingis, Duquesne University Press, 2003.

Cambre, Rachel Alexander. “Classical Schools in America: A Movement of Hope.” The Heritage Foundation, 26 Aug. 2024, www.heritage.org/education/report/classical-schools-america-movement-hope.

Roberts, Kevin D. “Why America’s Kids Need to Learn from the Founders via ‘Classical Schooling.’” The Heritage Foundation, 20 May 2024, www.heritage.org/education/commentary/why-americas-kids-need-learn-the-founders-classical-schooling.

“WCS Library Books.” Moms 4 Liberty, momsforlibertywc.org/books/. Accessed 11 Dec. 2024.

Wolf, J. (1981). NCJRS Virtual Library. Enforcement Terrorism | Office of Justice Programs. https://ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/enforcement-terrorism#:~:text=Enforcement%20terror%20involves%20violent%20actions,and%20is%20generally%20government%20sponsored.

Burke, Lindsey, and Gene Hamilton. “Project 2025 | Presidential Transition Project.” Project 2025, 2024, www.project2025.org/.

Butler, Judith. “The Global Scene .” Who’s Afraid of Gender, 1st Edition ed., Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York City, New York 2024, pp. 29–52.

Notes

The anti-gender movement is against the inquiry of gender as being a category that is open and subject to interpretation and debate. Conservatives are not strictly against gender, but they are against the lack of patriarchal order that scholars and activists are against. ↩︎
This type of rhetoric is also used to support anti-trans and specifically anti-trans women rhetoric. ↩︎
The particular social order that I am referring to is the White Phallocratic Reality. ↩︎

Working Ducks Need More Bucks

UO Student Workers — Wed, 08 May 2024 00:25:15 -0800

UO Student Workers represents over 4,000 student workers at our University and we start bargaining for our first contract next month! Our contract will be the first of its kind in the country, and we need the support of our entire campus to win. It’s time to fight for our L.I.V.E.S. and win a Living wage, Integrity in the workplace, Vital care on campus, Environmental and safety protections, and improved Scheduling! We don’t have the dates for our first session yet, but follow our Instagram @uostudentworkers to stay updated. Also, if you work on campus, reach out to get involved. We have contract action team meetings every Monday at 6pm in Lillis 112!

Some things were bargaining for are higher wages, harassment and discrimination protections, a shorter pay period, clean energy on campus, and better access to healthcare on campus
We need all students to care about this campaign in order to win. We can win a legally binding document with the university and improve conditions not only for student workers, but also all students on campus.
We wanted to start bargaining earlier but the University has stalled giving us accurate lists of workers, answering our information requests without charging us thousands of dollars, or scheduling bargaining times. We also want to try to talk to as many workers as possible before going to the table but we’re looking forward. Get involved in your union!

We Violate University Policy You Violate International Law

UO Students for Justice in Palestine — Wed, 08 May 2024 00:11:40 -0800

Beginning 7 AM on Monday April 29, students are occupying the Knight Library Lawn at the University of Oregon campus to demand the university to do its part in ending the ongoing genocide of Palestinians.

Throughout the last century, Israel has solidified its colonial settler state through ethnic cleansing, mass displacement, and apartheid. Today, many Palestinians occupy the Gaza Strip, one of the most densely inhabited areas on earth, where the Israeli government has killed over 34,000 people in the past seven months. Israel’s targeted attacks on homes, hospitals, and key infrastructure are acts of genocide and must end.

University of Oregon students have set up a liberated zone on the UO campus as students at universities across the nation emerge as leaders in the fight for Palestinian liberation. We demand that our institutions boycott and divest from the state of Israel, Israeli companies, and any weapons or surveillance manufacturing. In addition, UO students demand the university put out statements and protections affirming the safety of Palestinian, Jewish, Muslim,

and Arab students on campus.

The UO Gaza Solidarity Encampment is part of one of the biggest student movements of the decade. Seeing these tents accumulate disrupts the aesthetic that universities attempt to display, especially during the touring season, insisting that attention is drawn to their sly complacency in the genocide.

“We violate university policy, you violate international law,” says Khoury at May 7th’s Defend Gaza Defend Each Other rally, a response to the university’s continued disregard and hostility towards the encampment and its very reasonable demands.

Since its start, the encampment has exponentially grown in size and support, as well as influenced the formation of the University of Oregon Faculty & Staff for Justice in Palestine group.

The marginal “debeautification” of UO’s campus hardly compares to the destruction caused by the genocide happening in Gaza, and by locating in one of the most picturesque parts of campus, UO administration cannot avert their eyes and will be forced to engage and listen to the demands of SJP, JVP, and other supporting groups.

Additionally, those who are protesting are standing in solidarity with the over a million displaced Palestinians. Ignoring or pettily complaining about the encampment only exposes your immense privilege where the largest inconvenience in your life is shutting off your phone to ignore the problems of the world.

Student leaders will be available for comment on-site, identifiable by red baseball caps.

The liberated zone is currently located on the Knight Library Lawn. It began at 7 AM on Monday, April 29, and will continue until demands are met by the university. Students call on students, faculty, and community members to stand with us.

How to Properly Fuck the Police

Tue, 07 May 2024 22:47:31 -0800

Art by Alexa Cruz Abarca

Cops off Campus is back! We are building a campus-wide movement for abolition with the goal of disarming, divesting from, and dismantling the university’s police department. Campus police, especially at the UO, have had a remarkably short history, meaning we have always had other ways of addressing key needs of students and the wider community. After forming in 2012, UOPD has led charges against student protests, as well as criminalized unhoused folks, people of color, and disabled folks on our campus and in our community. A campaign to bring abolitionist solutions to UO would include finding ways to address mental health crises, the housing crisis (which UO has been a main contributor), conflict within our community, and fight for student control of key spaces on the campus, including health services and the EMU. Eugene has been on the forefront of creating systems of crisis support through CAHOOTS, something that can and should be extended to the University of Oregon campus. Abolition is nestled in a nexus of Palestine, labor, the environment, housing, and other crises perpetuated by our administration and UOPD.

Give Uter-Us Our Rights!

Students for Choice and Socialist Feminist Commitee — Tue, 07 May 2024 22:02:13 -0800

Art by Socialists for Change

The Socialist Feminist Committee and Students for Choice are fighting together to get medication abortion on campus! Misoprostol, also known as the abortion pill, is one of the most demanded basic needs that is not provided by the university. The fight for this service has been going on for a long time in the state legislature, but we refuse to wait for politicians and shareholders to decide that we are allowed control over our own bodies. Instead, we choose to organize and take action to get what we need.

Our current university system is blocking students from accessing the reproductive care that they deserve while our country’s government is actively participating in the removal of bodily autonomy rights.

As students of the University of Oregon and residents of the state of Oregon, we are fortunate to live in an area that allows access to abortion without intervention. This does not take into account the economic and social difficulties that many face when in a situation concerning their own reproductive rights. Just because we have some access where we currently live, this does not mean that there are not millions of individuals that live in other areas of this nation who have to fight for their own bodily autonomy every single day. With the repeal of Roe v. Wade and a large increase in anti abortion care legislation being passed around the nation, it is of the utmost importance that we fight for reproductive rights not only on the UO campus, but also for the greater movement.

We are actively working on a campaign and petition which focuses on calling out the University of Oregon Health Services for their lack of support towards abortion care on campus. The Socialist Feminist Committee and Students for Choice are petitioning for the university to provide on-demand abortion medication and informed consent gender affirming care. These two are the most in demand services that students at the University of Oregon need, and we need it now. With the closure of Peacehealth hospitals, there will be a visible gap in the access to trans and reproductive healthcare that we need. Oregon and the University promote themselves as an inclusive and progressive campus, but we must be aware of the capitalistic systems that control whether or not we get a Bodacious campaign for the Heisman trophy or if we help students in need with reproductive justice and trans healthcare. We are working with QA3 to develop details of the HRT petition and we are working with S4C to develop the abortion pill petition.

Art by Socialists for Change

The Daily Error: Privelege and Ignorance

Dorian Blue — Tue, 07 May 2024 13:08:24 -0800

Following the April 15 Shut it Down for Palestine blockade held on the I-5 by around 60 protesters, the Daily Emerald published an article covering the demonstration. In this article, they included the full names of several activists who had been arrested. These activists had been cornered and arrested by more than a hundred police armed to the teeth and in full riot gear, then were detained for upwards of 36 hours, some in solitary confinement. According to the anarchist publication It’s Going Down, “while protesters stood in the road, even sitting cross-legged for some time, officers responded by mass arresting everyone present, even those who attempted to comply with their demands and leave the freeway.”

While these activists were incarcerated and shut off from the wider world, without their knowledge or consent, their names were exposed by a newspaper that claims to “elevate the voices of marginalized people.” I find their mission statement to be a joke. These activists had already endured horrific treatment at the hands of the police state for their cause. The last thing they needed was to have their names doxxed by a student newspaper that’s supposed to fairly and safely deliver the news. It’s incredibly embarrassing and shameful that students who are in journalism school,

and are even required to take an Ethics in Journalism class, are breaking the most basic rules of it. These so-called journalists have gotten comfortable in their own incompetence. They constantly release articles riddled with misinformation and quotes taken out of context. There’s a disconnect between true social justice and the reporters at the Emerald. They don’t engage with any causes outside of shitting out articles to meet their quotas.

The activists who are current students here could have faced repercussions from admin from their involvement with the protest, and one of the other people they named as a student graduated last year. Even while doxxing people, they don’t have their facts right.

On top of Emerald still calling the genocide happening in Gaza the “Israel-Hamas war,” they put these activists in harm’s way with their negligence. I have low expectations for the Emerald already and they keep dropping the bar lower. “It would be hypocritical of our values to hold other groups accountable yet not hold those within our own organization up to our own ethical standard.” Given this, I encourage them to release a full statement on their mistake. Their edits stating their regret directly on the article aren’t enough. If they are so staunch about their “impartiality” they need to honor that by giving their full respect to the people they harmed.

The Critiques of Capitalism in the Short Film Niveles

Kamalei Doswell — Mon, 06 May 2024 15:48:37 -0700

“Eye opening, psychological torture” is how director Alejandra Paz would describe her sophomore short film _Niveles. _It was in 2023 when Paz, a Cinema Studies major and graduate of the University’s Class of 2023, was inspired to make this film. She was struck with inspiration while filming _Los Ojos, _her first short film, in Knight Library. While carrying equipment in the library’s golden elevator, she remarked on how cool of a location this would be to make a short film, associating the gold of the elevator with money, and how the elevator could represent different social class and working class levels. Despite there being different working positions, however, the exploitation of workers by authority figures remains omnipresent. Thus the concept of _Niveles _was born.

Niveles is centered around a snapshot of the life of Itzel, a package deliverer and the film’s main character. While delivering packages at work, Itzel travels to different floors of the building. Each floor features a different worker who displays bloodied and gruesome side effects of each “level” of capitalism. Itzel undergoes her own transformative process when she is confronted by the company CEO who shows blatant ignorance and apathy for the reality and circumstances of the working class.

In the interview Paz talked about wanting her films to be centered around creativity and inclusivity, but also to teach people and make them uncomfortable. Both of these are integral in the genre of psychological horror, a genre that both of her films fall into. From the moment Itzel, the film’s main character, arrives at her job, the film takes on a portentous tone. As per the film’s title, _Niveles _is a story of levels, specifically working class levels. As the audience catches a glimpse of each level, the message implicated is that no matter what “level” one is on, no matter how high up one gets, they will continue to be stuck in this cycle of capitalism and continue to be exploited, especially in the case of people of color.

The physical manifestations of the toll of this cycle are seen on the bodies of different employees in the film. Starting on the first floor, there is a janitor who is in a dissociative trance, sweeping. When the audience sees that same worker towards the end of the film, they are on their knees scrubbing the floors so hard to the point that their hands are bloody and scabbed. While sobbing, they repeatedly say “I have to get out of here.”This is an example of how the cycle of capitalism not only destroys the body and mind, but also self regenerates by keeping people of color within the cycle, indicating that they can work themselves to the bone and to the point of raw and bloody hands yet everything will remain in the same place; nothing they do will break this cycle.

Another example can be seen when looking at the office worker on the third floor. When the audience is first introduced to this character, she is being berated by her manager. However, by the end of the film, her face is covered in blood after beating her manager. The beating of the manager indicates a different type of breaking point that is reached, a breaking point where rather than working too hard and inflicting pain on oneself, pain is instead being inflicted upon others. This can be interpreted as a loss of self that occurs with having been belittled and pushed so hard for so long by the alienation of capitalism.

Niveles can be described as a film of fear rather than a film of horror. There are no jumpscares within the film, rather it leaves the audience with a longer lasting sense of fear and discomfort compared to relying on momentary shocks. Paz intentionally made the film that way, and I would argue that because of that intentionality, the film is better for it. The story depicted is not an embellished one, rather it’s a real and human one. To watch the film and understand the underlying meanings does in fact prove to be an eye-opening, psychological form of torture as the audience is left to question their own role in this capitalistic cycle. Paz’s overall goal when creating the film was to educate communities, especially given the whitewashed and colonized education system, and should the audience be willing, _Niveles _does in fact prove to be educational.

Kindness as an Agent of Radical Change

Eclipse — Mon, 06 May 2024 15:27:54 -0700

When was the last time someone did something kind for you? Was it a little surprising that someone might be going out of their way to help you? What if acts of kindness were the norm, instead of the exception?

I learned recently of a message board in my middle school where people could write a note about a kind thing that someone did for them. It’s a demonstration of how much small acts of kindness mean to us, and it’s an opportunity to give some of that kindness back to the world. Someone might love to know that something they did for another person mattered to them, and it might mean a lot to them. More than that, it’s an opportunity for others to share in the warm feeling that kindness brings.

I imagine myself standing in front of the board reading each message, a smile on my face and a satisfied feeling in my heart. Noticing acts of kindness in public is something that helps me feel hopeful in a largely depressing world. I love to hear two friends laughing together, or seeing someone return a dropped item to a stranger. These actions may be small, but the feeling they spark is not. I think we need to notice this feeling more, and put more effort into creating it.

I find that these small acts tend to remain crystal clear in people’s memories, and I don’t think that’s for the sake of “niceness” or anything so superficial. They feel so good because kindness is human nature! For major survival-based reasons, kindness and generosity are core values of humanity. People survive and thrive when they cooperate and support each other, not when they compete for selfish purposes. The damages of a culture that incentivizes greed and personal gain are becoming more and more obvious to many, and many people know already that our society is being torn apart by corporations that prioritize profit over all else.

So let’s change this culture, and let’s start by being kinder to each other whenever we can. Recall the random, sweet interactions with strangers that leave a grin on your face and content in your heart. Go out of your way to help someone else, and be confident that someone will do the same for you. As kindness becomes the norm between individuals, it will follow into generosity and cooperation in workplaces and institutions. In this manner we will transform our society into one that provides freedom and happiness not through vast and blind declarations, but through intentional care and love for one another.

Sub Boys and Dom Girls: An examination of kink at UO

The Boy Wonder — Mon, 06 May 2024 15:16:17 -0700

I’ve been a submissive guy since I was a small child.

It’s who I am and it’s never changed. It’s my sexuality — just as you can’t change being gay, I can’t change being a sub. I know dominant women feel the same way.

I don’t want to be a strong, masculine, confident, dominant man. That’s not who I am. I feel comfortable with my submissive masculinity, even though others try to take it from me. It’s hard to find safe spaces where I can be myself.

But my entire life I’ve felt excluded and shamed for who I am and what makes me comfortable. We live in a heteronormative patriarchal society; being the opposite of patriarchal makes you an outcast, and you are shamed and have to live in the shadows.

I’m often called “gay” online if I express who I am or my desires. But I’ve never been attracted to men. I’m straight — I am only attracted to people with female sex organs.

I often feel that vanilla girls will try to shame me for who I am just as men do. I’ve seen non-dominant girls saying it’s an “ick” for a guy to be submissive; they think that submissive men are weird and undesirable. In doing so, they hold up patriarchal values.

It’s fine if they’re not into it, but I don’t want to feel shamed and bullied just because it’s not something they’re personally into. If you’re a non-dominant girl, and you find that the guy you’re with is submissive, please do not shame them. Instead, just say “I’m sorry but I’m not into that”.

——

The trouble I encounter at UO is that I feel as though it’s a very vanilla, conformist campus. It feels hostile towards those with nonconformist sexual needs.

On dates I often feel uncomfortable because the girl I’m with usually expects me to be a certain way and fit in a certain box. I obviously cannot come clean about my identity on the first date; I don’t want to make people uncomfortable. But it’s difficult not being able to be upfront about what I need in that kind of relationship. For me personally, a girl being sexually dominant is a make-or-break deal.

In turn, girls I’m on dates with often try to fit themselves into an image that they believe I want to see. Girls believe that most guys want “submissive,” innocent, “womanly” girls that the guy can swoop in and lead around. But I’m not attracted to it. It sometimes feels fake, like a performance.

As our professor discussed gender performativity in my Gender in Media class, it became apparent to me that this was part of the “problem” I’ve kept being faced with. As a straight man I’d never even heard of the concept of gender performativity before, but I now realize that it helps sum up the difficulties I find while dating.

When I date people in the kink community, I don’t face these issues of performativity. They feel like they’re being themselves. They’ve freed themselves from the conventions and performance of gender. They feel comfortable, and so do I.

——

It’s a lot easier for me to go out with people who know “the deal” — people who know what we’re looking for from the very start.

As such, I personally will try to find spaces that provide a layer of protection or anonymity so that I can find my sexual counterparts.

The anonymity provided on apps such as YikYak at UO allowed me to finally meet dominant girls for the first time in my life. My first time felt perfect. I felt like myself and in my own skin. I felt all the anxiety in my life completely wash away.

However, that anonymity comes as both a blessing and a curse. As Sophomore year came, new and less-accepting students attended UO, and I became subject to more harassment and shaming than the year before. It was no longer safe for people like us.

So I tried moving on to other apps and websites such as Fetlife and FET. But the problems are that those websites contain bots, scammers, and unsolicited messages.

Eventually, I came back to YikYak, and things felt much more like how they did in Freshman year. There were still intolerant freshmen, but I felt much better about being myself.

However, I do truly believe there needs to be a community meant specifically for kinky people at UO. Such a community should not only offer some form of anonymity and confidentiality, but also free of shame and free of danger from men. Not only that, but also non-kinky people on YikYak can be free of those kinds of discussions.

Perhaps this can be done via some kind of secret club, with an entrance code that can only be given in exchange for an agreement that no person’s identity in kink be discussed outside of the club?

This club could also have an open Telegram group for virtual communication, in case members do not yet feel safe or comfortable meeting in-person with their kinky identities.

The options are all here, and I hope that kinky people at UO can unite in a safe space and be ourselves without fear of judgment.

Sexual liberation is not only for vanilla people.

UO Student Organizers Building Just Student Futures on Campus

ROAR Center — Mon, 06 May 2024 15:09:34 -0700

Eugene: The coalition leaders of the Radical Organizing and Activism Resource (ROAR) Center met on Friday afternoon to discuss the future of student-led organizing on the University of Oregon campus. This meeting marks a renewed commitment from the coalition to student organizations as both a resource center and an organizing community.

The ROAR Center is a resource for social and environmental activists, and it has been a central part of the UO community since its inception in 1970. In recent years, ROAR has organized events and campaigns covering an array of issues, including racial, labor, and environmental justice. It serves as a primary resource to undergraduate student organizations seeking to initiate change on campus and in the community, aiming to educate and empower student activists.

The ROAR Center has maintained its resources across the years, even during the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown, yet more recently student activists have become isolated in their various issue areas. The coalition leaders meeting on February 16 reconnected student activists across these areas, and allowed them to identify shared interests and potential organizing campaigns to amplify student voices on campus. Their meeting follows numerous wins by several campus-led organizations, such as the UO Student Worker’s (UOSW) union certification and the Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation’s (GTFF) recent contract ratification, signifying the potential of student activism to catalyze substantial change across campus.

“This is a big moment for UO’s organizing community,” said ROAR Co-director Valentine Bentz. “Student activists unify members of our campus, and ROAR is excited to activate new and experienced leaders toward long overdue change.”

In line with this reinvigorated organizing momentum, renowned activist, educator, author, and scholar Dr. Angela Y. Davis is coming to campus for a keynote speech and moderated Q+A on Wednesday, March 6th. The talk will focus on the connection between students and the ongoing genocide in Palestine, and will take place in Straub 156 at 6:00pm. The event is made possible by a collaboration between the UO Multicultural Center and the ROAR Center. More details will be made available in the coming weeks via both organizations’ social media. Follow @roarcenter and @uoregonmcc on Instagram to stay in the loop.

All Eyes on Rafah

Dorian Blue — Mon, 06 May 2024 15:07:45 -0700

On February 14, around 80 students and community members gathered in the EMU amphitheater to hold a rally about the situation in Rafah, a city in Palestine. 1.5 million displaced Palestinians are sheltering there, as they were told it was a safe zone to evacuate to. Now, even though it was claimed to be a safe area, it’s being heavily bombed by the IDF and there’s an impending ground invasion.

The bombardment of Rafah was started on Superbowl Sunday, when the Israeli regime knew a lot of America would be looking away. To counter this, Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voices for Peace organized the rally and die-in to bring peoples’ attention to the worsening situation.

In a join statement with PSU’s Student United for Palestinian Equal Rights, SJP explained that “we cannot continue going through each day as if the genocide and ethic cleansing of an entire people is not occurring before our eyes.”

After gathering outside, the protest was taken inside the EMU, where a projection and poster were put up. The projection showed important numbers, like the amount of people killed, injured, and missing so far in Rafah and the amount of tax money from Eugene that’s funding the genocide, which is $2,687,851.

To represent the lives of the martyrs lost in Rafah, the group staged a die-in. For around five minutes, they lay on the floor in silence. It was an atmosphere of heavy silence, where everyone was invited to reflect on the atrocities being done to the Palestinian people with American tax money.

Per the joint statement: “We honor them [the martyrs] by laying in silence, reflecting upon the damage that has been done.”

After this, the protestors marched around the EMU to the green, chanting with each other. For a Wednesday afternoon, there was an admirable turnout. SJP plans to hold many more rallies, protests, and events in the coming weeks, so everyone should make sure to keep their eyes out for ways to get involved now.

The Problem of 'White' Dsa

ROCK — Mon, 06 May 2024 14:46:40 -0700

YDSA: Young Democratic Socialists of America

YDSA does good tangible work; they spread word about workers rights and push forward unionization. However, UO’s YDSA internally suffers very clearly from the pitfalls of existing within such a dramatically white location, leading to an ultimate manner of elitist superiority and the propagation of the white leftist.

We talk a lot about white liberals, but not enough about the white leftist. The white leftist often harbors a complex of ideological enlightenment which leads them to believe they are above the frivolities of petty interpersonal discrimination.

It often feels as if they are so busy being swept up in championing against their equal oppression under the capitalist regime that they fail to remember their own sincere level of privilege in society: the privilege of being seen amongst peers; the privilege of mobility and freedom to exist as multifaceted individuals with these ideals of socialism (as opposed to many POC who will get reduced to and derogatorily seen as only that identity); and the privilege of being allowed to be heard as powerful voices of this ideology.

And this place of privilege has resulted in an approach to socialism that is painfully reminiscent of Leninism: the educated elite infiltrating the working class for the pursuit of their communist agenda, and is this really the history that we need to repeat? Though, then again, I would argue that YDSA is not even knowledgeable of communist literature; failing to understand and acknowledge communism’s history of application, and its integral cultural implications in many nonwhite peoples.

I personally am of the opinion that one should have one of two things: a lived experience or a multifaceted breadth of ideological comprehension. However, YDSA seems to lack both, existing with no more depth than an infographic marked “How to Revolution”.

And it must not go unrecognized that communism has most often been pursued by countries of the “global south” that have endeavored to free themselves from the socio-economic clusterfuck caused by western expansion, imperialism, and colonization. Thus YDSA’s lack of recognition of a mangled history that consists of lives lost and defiled due to severe anti-communist sentiment; as well as their failure to acknowledge and revere the people who have triumphed, finally pushing out the perverse penetration of colonial power in their country (though they still remain burdened by its shadows and international stigma); silently reverberates as a tone deaf white-washing of what communism/socialism is.

And this problem is only exacerbated by the enormous whiteness of the room, and their horrible retention of POC. Don’t believe me? Go to one YDSA meeting and count the number of BIPOC in that room. The number will likely not surpass the bounds of your fingers (under the assumption that you have ten), and if it does, certainly not your toes as well. For a group that supports ideals that disproportionally would liberate BIPOC (who overwhelmingly work in jobs proximal to manual labor), they certainly do not represent the demographic at all.

Eugene Housing's Perpetual Cycle of Horror

The Student Insurgent — Mon, 06 May 2024 14:23:47 -0700

A Condensed List of UO Housing Atrocities

[on campus housing]

Hamilton and Earl have no elevators
Communal bathrooms and accessibility; bathtubs only in Riley
Overcrowding of the dorms; already cramped doubles turning into triples
Some temporary rooms (for those who need to leave dangerous roommate situations) turned into quads, defeating the purpose
Kalapuya and GSH literally sinking
12 credit requirement to live in dorms: no exceptions
The fact that Hamilton is still somehow open
Most expensive buildings are the buildings named after POC (pointed out by UO Black Male Alliance President - Desi Acuay - in Emerald Article “How new dorms are named”)

[UO sponsored housing]

Heinously expensive for cheap and often unavailable amenities
Management tends to be ass
Pest infestations and untreated black mold problems
Simply not adequately cleaned between tenants, despite charging cleaning fees

Problems in Student Housing Hierarchy and the Overreliance on Cops

Student Housing management systematically over-relies on RAs, while at the same time not providing adequate resources, training, nor protections for them as workers. This leads to a very poor shuffling of responsibilities - responsibilities that should be taken on by the university - to the RAs.

A large example is interpersonal discrimination/harassment in the dorms. Firstly, these conflicts should be dealt with swiftly by the university, as they promise a safe space for all people; and harassment of any kind should not be tolerated. However, the university is, as we are all well aware, a heavily flawed institution, so this responsibility falls to the RAs, which leads to a second fundamental problem: RAs are not given the resources nor the training to adequately address these situations, leading to dangerous experiences for students and a large overinvolvement of cops in what should be a safe living space (especially in Barnhart).

According to an experienced RA, who we will call Z, de-escalation makes up the majority of an RAs job, and this plays a very important role in preventing potential violence and harm. Yet in the most recent RA training, the de-escalation training segment was shockingly brief, of only about 10 minutes. Rather, UO pushes RAs to become cozy with cops, even hosting meet and greets with UOPD. This is a crystal clear failure of the university to prioritize the safety of its students; cops are shit at de-escalation.

And if RAs instead turn to UO housing for resources, they are met with, as Z puts it, an incredibly “opaque process” that does not enable necessary change. One step above the RAs, the community directors, quit en masse every year, and reeducation for new hires is half-baked, failing both them, and the students. Furthermore, there are not sufficient protections for the RAs themselves, who often experience unaddressed harassment, sexual harassment, and forms of discrimination.

Predatory Property Managers vs Mom and Pop Landlords

Large property managers of student sponsored housing run their buildings as competitive businesses, constantly sacrificing quality while jacking up prices, thus monopolizing the available housing market. These property managers relish at the obedient and endless supply of students feeding straight into their shitty apartments year after year, luxuriating in the ease and simplicity of it all, and taking fiendish delight in providing the absolute minimum, if even that, for a premium price.

Additionally, these properties have the benefit of guaranteed temporarity, where tenants who are students are less likely to speak up on the atrocities of management because they will likely move out after a brief temporal frame anyway. The predatory targeting of students is becoming ridiculously clearer by the day. Instagram fills with UO clubs with random housing sponsorships (which often are completely irrelevant to the content of the club itself), and on-campus housing fairs only feature the same buildings year after year: 2125, 515, 959, Arena, Identity, etc.

This monopoly of traffic forces smaller mom and pop landlords out of business. Although smaller landlords can also be exploitative, they are more often operating as an individual rather than a vast faceless system, where they can work with individual people with their individual needs.

The housing market plays a large role in contributing to Eugene’s economic ecosystem that in large part thrives off the teamwork between large corporations to create a controlled environment for the exploitation of students that pushes smaller businesses off the plane of potential prosperity; and this problem is emphasized by most students not knowing their tenant rights in the first place, and that they apply to on campus housing as well.

Protections and Resources

UO Confidential Advocates: trained sexual assault resource
- Free confidential and trained therapists
- Call hotline: 541-346-SAFE
Fair Housing Council of Oregon
- For breaches of Fair Housing Law
- Addresses provable discrimination against protected class identities: on the basis of race, color, national origin/ethnicity, religion, family status (with children under 18), physical or mental disability, sex/gender, legal sources of income (ex. charging too high for move-in fees and deposits for those under section 8 housing choice voucher program)
- Applies to discrimination between tenants as well, because the landlord is supposed to intervene and protect
- Fill out complaint form: https://complaints.boli.oregon.gov/home/landing
Springfield Eugene Tenant Association
- Landlord tenant law handbook
- Landlord overcharging, failure to maintain, habitability standards not met (mold, pests, etc.)
- Call hotline: 541-972-3715

Hold On... Let Us Tell You About It: The ASUO Election

The Student Insurgent — Mon, 06 May 2024 14:11:11 -0700

The end of the 2024 ASUO election was marked by the winning of Mariam Hassan and Kiki Akpakwu after the presidential and vice presidential candidates of the UO Student Power slate dropped out right before a planned run off. It was an unceremonious end to a fraught, contentious election cycle with many ups and downs. The dust hasn’t settled yet, as some of the actions committed by candidates and others involved in campaigns have perpetuated serious harm.

Before the elections even started, ASUO was in hot water for its concert being planned on the same weekend as the Mother’s Day Powwow for the second year in a row. This led to each different slate, aka glorified party platforms created by students, pledging to enact change and to have better communication with cultural organizations to prevent other incidents like that happening again. One of the slates, Flock Forward, was especially under scrutiny due to many of its candidates being directly involved or aware of the concert planning. This made them dead in the water fairly early. OurUO was in the lead, but did have some competition from UO Student Power, a slate being led by leadership from UO Students Workers and YSDA. Their supporters lauded UOSP for having detailed plans on how to improve the university for students, informed by their organizing experience and leftist politics.

Some cracks began to show thanks to critiques of UOSP presidential candidate Max Jensen. He was one of the main organizers of the Angela Davis talk that happened in March, which suffered from poor planning and overcrowded conditions that led to thousands of hopeful attendees being crushed against each other or turned away. Additionally, MCC invited UOPD which is not only disrespectful to Angela Davis, but also deterred many students, especially students of color, from staying. That is only a brief summary of the problems, others including accessibility issues as well as discomfort from many attendees who felt that the event was overly profiteering off of Angela Davis’ presence. Unfortunately, the statement provided by the ROAR about the event was withdrawn from The Insurgent in the wake of the event.

The Danger of TPUSA

One of the more shocking pieces of information to come out was about the OurUO campaign. Last year, Hassan and Akpakwu went to an all expenses paid conference hosted by the Campus Victory Project. CVP is an arm of Turning Point USA, a far right organization whose mission is to act as a fascist agitator on college campuses around the country.

They have made several appearances at UO and in the Eugene area before, including an event on campus in February 2023 where two TPUSA affiliated speakers engaged in intense arguments with attendees that almost led to physical fighting. They thrive on a persecution complex; whenever they come to progressive areas like Eugene, they want to ignite controversy and violence, then moan about “liberal intolerance.” When Charlie Kirk, the leader of TPUSA, came to UO in 2018, video cameras were all around him. He wanted students to approach him and argue, and then use the footage to fan the flames of his troll empire.

In a leaked Campus Victory Project flier, it’s stated that their “first and primary goal is to commandeer the top office of Student Body President at each of the most recognizable and influential American universities.” This includes Pac 12 institutions. It’s obvious that CVP targeted Hassan and Akpakwu specifically as part of their goals. It doesn’t take much to identify that CVP is a conservative endeavor either. Their website is adorned with a bald eagle and stars and stripes, and the name itself comes from the long tradition of authoritarians treating ideology as a battlefield that they must “win.”

In OSU’s student government election in February, there were multiple issues with candidates being influenced by CVP. The Daily Barometer, the campus newspaper, wrote a story with quotes from several anonymous sources in the student government that expressed their concerns about CVP money being involved in the election. This was never proven, but TPUSA certainly has the time and money to spare. Every year, they receive millions of dollars from conservative interests. If this level of involvement can happen 30 miles up the road from Eugene, it’s not a far stretch to see it impacting here.

Kirk, who has never attended a university a day in his life, has spoken about his aims of hijacking student governments many times. At one conference in 2015, he stated: “We’re not going to change the professor’s mind. You’re not going to get teachers fired. The only vulnerability there is, the only little opening, is student-government-association races and elections, and we’re investing a lot of time and energy and money in it.”

After the news of the two OurUO candidates attending the CVP conference came out, they released a statement on April 6. “As two women of color, we were appalled to hear any connection made between us and this organization; this is damaging, and dangerous for Mariam considering the social climate we are in.” After all, TPUSA proudly expresses its pro-Israel and islamaphobic views. It supports Trump and also hosts many events with Kyle Rittenhouse, who committed a racist shooting during a BLM protest in Kenosha Wisconsin, portraying him as a hero. OurUO’s statement ends by saying “we are extremely disheartened by this situation.”

It’s hard not to be disheartened. From all angles, this is disturbing. The new ASUO president and vice president were intentionally targeted by a far-right organization. While the candidates should have researched the organization more, TPUSA and their almost decade-long effort to upend student governments is insidious and won’t end any time soon. They will continue to try to get student leaders to attend their events, whether they know who TPUSA really are or not. With the amount of dark money pouring into their coffers, their efforts are relentless and everyone with an interest in student government and the funding they control needs to look out for their influence.

The Grievances

On Friday of election week, the Election Board began to be barraged by grievances filed by all three slates. Student Power’s campaign manager filed multiple grievances against the other slates, including one accusing Flock Forward of animal abuse for one of its members bringing out their pet bunny to the EMU.

One of which resulted in UOSP being completely barred from campaigning, though it was rescinded to allow them to campaign only online. This type of behavior reflected poorly on an otherwise serious campaign. It was hard to see them as any better when they engaged in the same mudslinging and petty behavior as the usual ASUO suspects. This made the last few days of the election very chaotic, with grievances and accusations being slung back and forth.

On top of bogus grievances, the most unethical part of UOSP’s campaign was their “endorsements” from UOSW and SJP. Both endorsements were only verified by the leaders of each organization, so they hardly have enough support to carry the weighty title of an entire student organizations’ approval (and although they do not claim to have the whole organization, that is more often the assumption when such endorsements are flamboyantly posted online to prove the validity of the campaign). This enables a thorough misrepresentation of the endorsing student groups, and it points out the performativity of the entire ordeal.

Additionally, while it makes logical sense for UOSW to endorse, as they are ideologically aligned with UOSP due to the large number of members on the slate being members of UOSW and YDSA, asking for an SJP endorsement is entirely unfounded. Not only did campaign manager Ian Finn display a disappointing lack of understanding and coherence when discussing SJP’s goals and needs, before and after the endorsement was retracted, but also the presidential candidate Jensen himself never made in-person contact with leader Salem Khoury throughout the entire election cycle, despite frequenting the same spaces on a daily basis.

A total of three grievances were filed in the duration of this incident. The first was filed by OurUO on behalf of SJP, because after quickly retracting their endorsement and stating that they wanted to maintain neutrality in the election, an Instagram post announcing SJP’s endorsement of UOSP was still posted and not removed promptly. Then, escalating the situation, rather than accepting SJP’s stance, UOSP quickly rebutted with a counter grievance about SJP’s edited chat messages, ignoring the sentiments of the actual leaders, while instead nitpicking the details of the first grievance.

The final grievance was filed after Jensen finally cracked, screaming at Khoury, yelling about how she “ruined his chance at the election,” and further stating that he had no concern for SJP nor did he care about the negative impact the useless grievances had on SJP, all as six members/supporters of UOSP silently sat and watched without intervening. It was only after two uninvolved individuals pleaded with him again and again to cease the yelling and aggressive behavior that he finally agreed to leave the space. Although not before shooting last minute derogatory comments to those who had stood up against his outburst. It was after this incident that the UOSP slate urged Jensen to step down from the running, leaving Hassan as the winner.

The sheer greed and commodification of students and student organizations in this election cycle, particularly displayed by UOSP who has yet to acknowledge their disrespect to Khoury, co-leader Salem Younes, and allied members of SJP, is appalling. Demanding an endorsement from an uninvolved Palestinian Solidarity organization further shows the problematic and damaging nature of ASUO elections, and how they dramatically fail students.

Final Post-Election Notes

The turnout in the election was higher than last year’s, but still shamefully low. The student body is disengaged and ASUO lets this happen by not allowing organizations to speak about the election and only allowing posters in certain areas of campus. The election isn’t “distracting” as they claim; it determines who’s in control of the purse strings of the millions of dollars of Incidental Fee money.

The amount of mudslinging and harassment that has taken place in this election is staggering. It’s been obvious from the beginning that all ASUO elections are an opportunity for stroking egos and jockeying for positions that look good on resumes, but this has made it all the more clear. There was also long harm done to people in and around the campaigns all for the sake of a student government election. That’s not to say it isn’t important, but let’s remember our priorities.

Following the runoff, UOSP won a majority in the senate. Despite the issues at the top, it was great to see this roster of candidates win out. They will hopefully bring a needed kick to student government and its actions. First and foremost, to facilitate greater use of the money under ASUO’s control, but also more transparency in general. While there were many issues throughout the whole election, this is the best resolution given the circumstances.

The Question of Divestment: UO's Commitment to Cheap Hummus and the War Machine

Salem Khoury — Sun, 28 Apr 2024 15:14:38 -0700

The University’s investments lie in weapon manufacturing, climate degradation, and furthering the oppression and genocide of the Palestinian People. What we have seen from the University, within its financial decisions, is the reason we would like to implement a boycott. Divestment means refusal of our money, our tax dollars, whatever we may invest in these institutions for education or otherwise, to be sent in favor of settler colonialism. We will not allow any funds to be sent to furthering the displacement and destruction of Palestinian land and its people.

Through multiple avenues, the University of Oregon sends students money from tuition and other fees to the state of Israel. UO’s entire asset pool, 2.8 billion dollars, is under management by a company called Jasper Ridge Partners, which in itself manages approximately $34 billion in assets into defense corporations.

On campus as well, and provided to faculty, is Hewlett-Packard. HP provides servers to Israel for its ‘population registry,’ in which IDs are issued based on one’s ‘level of rights’ under Israel’s exclusionary system in which Palestinians do not have the same ‘level’ of rights as citizens. Their Itanium servers are used to operate the Aviv System, the computerized database of Israel’s Population and Immigration Authority. HP represents the backbone of Israel’s racial segregation tactics under their system of apartheid. They are also the exclusive provider of computers to the Israeli military, as well as servers and technology to aid Israel’s prison system. HP plays a crucial role in Israel’s mass incarceration project to assist in the oppression, harm, and unjust imprisonment of Palestinians.

As we carry their products in the Unthank Dining Hall, you might know Sabra. Sabra is owned by the Strauss Group, an Israel-based corporation, with Headquarters and multiple factories in occupied territory. The Strauss Group is traded on the Tel Aviv 35 Index, which includes Israel’s largest public companies. They also provide financial support and supplies to the Golani and Givati brigades of the Israeli military, which were found by the United Nations to be in stark violation of human rights and international law. Sabra, alongside EDX, Dell, Amazon, and more, are all complicit in furthering the oppression inflicted upon Palestinians. In the scope of an Academic Boycott, the university also offers three (3) exchange programs to Israeli universities in Occupied Palestine. These include: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Technion Israel Institute of Technology. On top of these exchange programs, the university invests money on collaborating with Israeli researchers and grants from an Israeli-American group promoting research between the two nations.

From direct connections to the financial pool of defense companies, alongside different corporations that further the Apartheid against Palestinians. Divestment needs to happen immediately. We want our university to cut ties with genocide in three distinct ways– economic divestment, academic boycott, and institutional partnership. These are our demands, and we will continue to protest until they are met.

Photographs by Robert Scherle

Crystallize Playlist

The Student Insurgent — Sun, 28 Apr 2024 15:10:52 -0700

The xx – Crystallised

Bjork – all is full of love

Galimatias & Alina Baraz – Drift

Cocteau twins – cherry colored funk

Massive attack – black milk

Yves tumor – echolalia

Akshara – universe

Sia – Soon We’ll Be Found

Tv girl – cigarettes out the window

Portishead – roads

Switchblade symphony – dissolve

Galimatias & Alina Baraz – Unfold

Elita – Sour Switchblade

Neo10y – ILY

Ariel Pink – Kitchen Witch

Meat Puppets – Aurora Borealis

Cibo Matto – King of Silence

Dan Deacon – When I Was Done Dying

Bôa – Duvet

The Smashing Pumpkins – The Boy

The Smiths – How Soon is Now?

Adrianne Lenker – not a lot, just forever

Puzzle – Loose Cannon

Israel’s Arcade – Car Crash

Crystal Castles – Vanished

The Microphones – Oh Anna

Roddy Ricch – Stop Breathing

Jon Vinyl – Addicted

Of Monsters and Men – Crystals

Beach House – Lazuli

WILLOW – Female Energy, Pt. 2

Joey Gx – Outer Space

Skunk Anasie – What You Do for Love

Blondie – Heart of Glass

Salina Killa – Cherry Street

Grimes – Genesis

Yot Club – mr rager

Jean Dawson – Starface*

Leland – Latitude

Suki Waterhouse – Good Looking

Crumb – Locket

Peter Cat Recording Co. – Love Demons

Noname – Song 32

Noname – Song 33

Noname – Forever

The Cranberries – Linger

Camille – Le Festin

Uh Huh – Always Falling

Laufey – Lovesick

Van Morrison – Moondance

Chang Ya Tung – In the Year 2000

Charles Aznavour – Hier encore (Instrumental)

Pleasure Venom – We Get What You Deserve

Devin Townsend – Genesis

Letter From the Collective (Crystallize)

The Student Insurgent — Sun, 28 Apr 2024 15:04:14 -0700

Editorial Board

Salutations! This issue’s theme is Crystallize. Our creators who followed this theme could take many routes: whether it was about a subject that seems to be stuck - crystallized - in history to this present day, it could be about fiery pain or immense pressure (vital steps in the formation of crystals), a current application of crystals (ex: how crystals are a big part of the witchtok movement and all the cultural appropriation that comes with it), something beautiful or clear like a crystal, and more! Various submissions in this piece include the theme word, see if you can spot them all!

We gather here today to mourn the loss of our wonderful technomancer - ch0ccyra1n - who is stepping down from the ed board this term. In her time here she has completely revamped the Insurgent website into its current beauty, has transformed Insurgent’s reach and accessibility by digitizing countless issues, and has made our collective more secure with her techy magic and open source resources. We see you, your talents, and appreciate you!

Feel free to support her future projects at ch0ccyra1n.gitlab.io

and follow her on Mastodon @ch0cyra1n@emeraldsocial.org

Nephrite

I implore everyone to reject the melodic mediocrity of audio industry giants - apple, bose, beats, JBL, etc. - and to instead join me in delighting in the beautiful bliss of Chi-Fi IEMs. Chi-Fi opens the door to Hi-Fi audiophile quality music at a range of very affordable prices. IEMs allow music to sparkle and shine, highlighting the intricacies of the music at CD quality, and create a whole new dimension to music immersion. Additionally, the IEM chassis are more fashionable, as well as more sustainable. There is modularity between IEMs, cables, and eartips that allow for a fully customizable experience, as adjusting any of these factors will produce a whole different sound, highlighting different levels and layers of the music. Check out head-fi.org and r/Chifi as beginning resources to learn more.

Alexa Cruz Abarca

Hey there!! I’m Alex(a) and I’m the outreach coordinator and I’m the illustrator of this and past covers. Right now I am absolutely cooked by how audio compression enhances music quality. When I would watch crappy anime AMVs as a kid on shitty earbuds all that juvenile edge sounded so beautiful I craved more. Recently, I attempted to listen to all the songs that were popular in that internet era and it genuinely felt off, they were the right versions and remixes but were uncompressed! Bit crush effects are my beloved but we live in an era where the audio quality is so crisp and as intended but I miss the audio hiccups that would arrive from tech prior. I ache for the cassette tape skip, how my father would burn me CDs of music and its varying qualities, camcorder recordings of music on the radio or the buzz from old radios. I always don my headphones and I would rather backflip than not have a soundtrack playing whilst I walk around campus but I miss these imperfections in my audio, they feel so lived in and special.

Eclipse

Hello! I’m Eclipse! You might see some of my work showing up in the Insurgent! I’m a first year political science student, so keep an eye out for any political theory/practice writings. Hopefully, my ideas will help advance the struggle against capitalism, xenophobia, and patriarchy. I’ll write for those of you who are struggling to find joy in life, struggling to cope with the whirlwind that is being alive in 2024. I want to help you find love and joy in small places where you don’t expect it. I’m convinced that love is everywhere, especially where it’s the least expected. I love cats (I’m perishing without mine), reading sci-fi and fantasy books, and being outside- rain or shine. I do my best to bring a little sunshine to the world around me, and I hope you’ll find my work to be uplifting, thought-provoking, and maybe a little controversial :)

Lynx

Hi everyone, I’m Lynx!! I submitted a lil poem for the Nostalgia issue, and plan to continue submitting to The Insurgent (despite not participating in this issue oops I’m sorry editorial board) from here on out! I’m a second-year studying Theatre Arts and Linguistics, and have no idea what’s going on half the time. BUT I’m always trying my best to find out, because there is so much beyond what they teach you in school. I have a dog who’s a little shit and I think Gorillaz is the perfect background music if you ever wanna feel like you’re walking around in an RPG. In the wise words of this one guy from America’s Got Talent: “I will not remain silent. I will not give in. I will die before I let Big Parma win.” Big Parma meaning parmesan. bye :3

Amaru

There’s just something… about… McDonalds sprite that sends an electric icy zing from the tip to the back of the tongue. Soda is bad for you though! Anyways, America has some massive crisis’ going on- yall stay safe, don’t be indoctrinated, stay questioning the norm and fuck being a basic ass barbie bitch. MWAH, good day y’all.

“UO’s Last Chance!” Rally and Averted Strike

Amaru — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 00:00:00 -0800

On January 11th, 2024 a troupe thick with signs and hoodies filled the EMU green as chants for a living wage emerged from the middle of the circle and radiated to the buildings. This was the final bargaining session for the Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation’s (GTFF) rising push to an equitable compensation for their vigorous work. The EMU green was strategically chosen to be in sight of the EMU room upstairs where GTFF’s bargaining team was currently negotiating the final expressions of GTFF’s proposed contract.

This final rally was a last chance for UO administration to propose a fair contract before a strike set to begin on January 17th. Due to unprecedented inflation, the stipend for UO graduate employees (GE’s) on average is merely 64% percent of Eugene’s living wage, despite many holding the equivalent of two full time jobs: undergraduate educators as well as graduate students, which highlights not only the failure of UO to recognize the value of GE’s work at this university, but also the failure of UO to respect GEs as workers at all.

After 10 months of pressure through #1 gathering membership and ally support, as a well as a looming threat of strike, UO finally provided a satisfactory contract, which for the course of 3 years will bring up the GEs’ salary to a $2500 per month minimum (and an average earning of about 90% of Eugene’s living wage), introduce anti-discrimination policies for trans and nonbinary GEs, as well as feature a new article specifically to address the needs of caregivers and international students to overall make graduate school more accessible to a broader range of people.

We interviewed Rosa, a vice president for GTFF communications and a strong member on the GTFF bargaining team, as we confirmed the contract agreed on is noted as being pretty damn good to most graduate employees! GTFF is currently in the ratification process of the new contract, as they are also impeccably informing members of GTFF at their general membership meetings of all it entails, with details. So one may ask, well what made the UO crack? Did someone new come in? Could admin not sleep after these persistent performances of unity lasered into their skulls that this is translucently callous decision making, and they should put their pride aside and perhaps their checks down a few bucks? Rosa answered with the truth, that there was a “sheer amount of passion, energy, and organization from (GTFF) members and allies” into the contract campaign.

From undergrad solidarity stretching to whole other campuses, there was nonstop paperwork, loops to twist backwards through, multitudinous hours waiting for UO responses, and countless cries of fury for justice, Rosa leaves us with wise words that hold nothing but the proven truth, that collective action works. It creates and hones leaders, igniting a fire that spreads through all involved as every little contribution was part of the big success. The GEs planted a seed last year and we now have a strong sapling growing to give us all a little shade from UOs burning exploiting rays.

Overall, the new contract is an incredible win for UO GEs, showcasing the power of collective action and unionization. Additionally, this win marks a long-awaited recognition of GEs as an integral part of the functioning of UO as an respectable educational institution. Without GEs, our own education (as undergraduates) would be subpar, as we would rely on people less qualified, less dedicated, and far less passionate to lead our sections, grade our assignments, and overall help us engage with and find value in our education. This recognition displays a culture shift at this university to indisputably classify GEs as the valuable employees they are at UO, and hopefully will pave the way for GEs in the future to fight for their rights in upcoming bargaining sessions.

What’s Next for GTFF?

With this win under their belt GTFF will now turn their attention to helping smaller unions in their upcoming bargaining sessions. Visit gtff3544.net/about/affiliations to learn more.

Friends with the Best American Girl

Mon, 19 Feb 2024 00:00:00 -0800

It’s beyond frustrating growing up with your femininity being questioned, children relentlessly teasing about my hair and amazed by how I was unsure of playground games. It was isolating, I saw girls being praised and wondered why it couldn’t be me. I befriended the most extraordinary girl, Elise, it felt reassuring that someone had viewed me of value that happened to be white. Time passed and I was in Elise’s car with our other friends, filled with bass boosted club music and laughs – it’s interrupted by Kylie, a Korean American,

“Oh God, I think the reason why I wanted to be liked by the white girls in my dance class was because I wanted to be them.” The car goes silent with quiet giggles erupting, I look over to Elise and a realization hits me.

Throughout our friendship, I admired Elise, I was obsessed with her smile and gorgeous round eyes. I questioned if I had a crush on her, but my admiration of her wasn’t on par with a realization of sexuality. So dearly, I wanted to be her other half – that I am just as beautiful and like her. People staring, impeccable fashion, taste that was highly regarded and no question of her femininity – she is the picture of girlhood and innocence that was enviable. I couldn’t relate to other girls, games of patty cake and mash weren’t games I had grown up with, the clothes my mother chose for me were laughable and my long hair were a reason to pull. No matter how hard I tried to assimilate, it felt out of reach. I could be in the same neighborhood, same interest in toys, same socioeconomic status and was continuously alienable. Elise was what I desired, she was all of that and our friendship was the closest way I could configure my image to be seen as a properly feminine girl. Even in our later years, she was my inspiration for makeup and I would contour my face to attempt like hers, acceptable youth beauty that is seen as desirable and unalienable. Despite her being my tether in Eurocentric excellence, she is still my greatest connection to femininity and intrapersonal connections of a white patriarchal world.

Institutional Ableism at UO - My Experience

Adrian A. — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 00:00:00 -0800

On October 14th, 2019, I was three weeks into my freshman year at the University of Oregon. I was living in Hamilton Hall, 8 hours away from my hometown in California. While walking back from the EMU to my dorm, I was struck by a car while using the crosswalk at the 13th and Agate intersection. My left femur absorbed the brunt of the impact and snapped - a comminuted displaced fracture that initially appeared to be a compound fracture. Luckily, the bone only tore through the muscles and did not puncture through the skin.

The femur (thighbone) is the longest and strongest bone in the human body and rated as one of the most painful bones to break. Evolving from quadrupedal to bipedal locomotion means that human femurs developed into an instrumental role in supporting the weight of the body when you stand and stabilizing you as you move; a break in the femur affects the function of the entire body. Even with advanced surgical treatment and physical therapy, it is near impossible to recover into the person you were before the injury. I was quickly rushed to PeaceHealth Riverbend and put into traction, had an emergency surgery performed in the early morning of October 15th by a highly skilled orthopedic surgeon and did not suffer from severe complications (like infections) resulting from the surgery. I am extraordinarily privileged in this regard, especially since I was a healthy active 18 year old before the accident. Nevertheless, the fallout from this injury was absolutely devastating.

The problems start with the accident site itself. The 13th and Agate intersection is infamous for being an absolute shitshow due to the high volume of students using it and how busy Agate St gets. Every single UO student I have spoken to about the accident has an anecdote about almost being hit by a car while using that crosswalk. The ER staff recognized it immediately and complained about the volume of injuries that occur there. Just a ways away down the road is another crosswalk between Hamilton and Unthank that has flashing lights and more pedestrian safety - how hard is it to approve the far busier four way stop?

Next comes UOPD. Right after the accident occurred and I regained consciousness, both the driver of the car and I were in shock. The driver, before being ushered away by someone, said “I didn’t see you!” I told anyone who would listen that I was sorry, I was so embarrassed, this all has to be my fault somehow. The driver’s statement of not seeing me was not taken down when UOPD responded to the scene. I was not interviewed until I was in the ER room on a very high dose of fentanyl and completely alone. The responding officer’s police report was less than a page and named me, the pedestrian, at fault because I repeatedly “expressed guilt.” Nevermind the fact that I was in the middle of the crosswalk when I was struck by the left side of the car. The officer that responded to my case went on vacation the day after, leaving me to have to get a lawyer and give another statement to her sergeant a month after the fact.

After seven days in the hospital, I was discharged and went to stay with my sister and her husband in Bend, OR. We were able to notify all of my professors within two days post-op but as we began to settle me in, it became clear that two weeks was nowhere near enough time to recover. I was wheelchair bound, taking oxycodone and muscle relaxers to try and dampen the excruciating pain, unable to bathe or use the toilet unassisted, and unable to dress myself or use any part of my left leg. My lower back atrophied. My left foot had little to no circulation, resulting in broken blood vessels over my toes. As the physical toll was wreaking havoc on my mental state, the academic consequences were just beginning.

My sister, an alumni from UO, had her own struggles with an undiagnosed learning disability while attending which gave her experience with navigating accommodations and academic support. When we called the AEC, we were told that they couldn’t help us because they didn’t deal with “temporary” disabilities. She was absolutely floored by this response and no appeal of ours could change that decision. I lost my scholarship and couldn’t appeal the decision. I was forced to withdraw from 2 out of the 4 courses I was enrolled in. I couldn’t switch from Hamilton to a more accessible residence hall. When I contacted different offices at the University for help, my best options were to essentially drop out and come back when I was healed, which was not feasible financially. Our phone calls and emails were going nowhere. I returned to campus after one month of healing and decided I would visit the offices of the multitudes of “resources” available to students in-person to attempt to get my academic career back on track.

I quickly realized that using a wheelchair would be too much of an ordeal with the wet pavement and lack of accessible entrances across campus. I forced myself up onto crutches with poor technique and hobbled down two flights of stairs every week to do laundry in Hamilton’s basement. The wet floors of the communal showers (and multiple other halls across campus) were incredibly dangerous to use crutches on, leaving me to crawl on the disgusting moldy floors to shower. Lawrence Hall’s “ramp” has a warning sign for how steep the grade is, Condon’s “ramp” has irregular paving and fills with puddles, the elevators for McKenzie, Lawrence, Condon, and Gerlinger were slow and tucked into far-away corners that added significantly more time and frequently made me late to classes. I applied for the access shuttle and was able to use it a few times, but my schedule was never incorporated into the system properly since it wasn’t filed months in advance. I had to use the same crosswalk I got hit at almost daily. If a lecture hall or classroom did have accessible seating, it was filled by other students which forced me to sit in the regular seats. At this time in my journey, I physically was unable to bend my knee to a 90 degree angle and physically unable to sit in the weird tilted seats for long periods of time because I’d lose circulation in my feet and start having muscle spasms in my lower back and thigh. My crutches would get in the way of the other students, it was impossible to use the bathroom, I couldn’t carry my phone or a coffee or food or get the door for myself. On top of that, I had nightmares every night, I was barely eating because Hamilton dining was inaccessible and noisy, I was terrified of existing on campus and felt like I was a complete nuisance for others to deal with.

My mental state got so bad that I hobbled across the 13th and Agate crosswalk, yet again, to visit the mental health services at the Health Center. I told the front desk I was suicidal and paranoid and got to sit with a sympathetic psychiatrist who informed me that I met all of the criteria for PTSD. I admitted out loud that the difficulty of existing, the daily extreme bodily pain, and the growing number of overdue medical bills being mailed to my dorm made me start to regularly consider death as an option to escape from all of it. I was informed that if I truly was feeling this way, then I would be placed under a 72-hour psychiatric hold and admitted to the hospital. I was still traumatized from the E.R. and still receiving medical bills. I lied, asked for my options for counseling, and was told that long-term counseling would be required for my case - I would be referred to therapists off-campus. I could barely navigate campus at the time. I returned to my dorm room and entered into a state of severe dissociation.

I’m entering into my fifth year at UO and I’m set to graduate with my BA in Spring 2024. I survived my freshman year, I even managed to pass a few classes every term - I was still put on academic probation, lost my financial aid, received a warning letter to my home address that I was about to flunk out of UO during 2020 and spent the entire summer writing letters of appeal to strangers, sending unnamed members of the UO Bureaucracy my medical records that depicted my bruised, broken, injured body and my fragile mental state. I routinely had to appeal Financial Aid until I finally hit the credit load that was considered “satisfactory.” I missed out on opportunities to explore my major, internships, and other opportunities during my freshman and sophomore years and spent my junior/senior year playing catch-up. I worked hard to get to this place and I did it on my own.

This is absolutely unacceptable for an institution that prides itself on acceptance and inclusion to do. UO staff reminded me that “the University can’t be held liable or sued because technically the city owns the intersection and the driver wasn’t affiliated with the university!” more often than they informed me of ways they’d be able to make me get to class easier. I didn’t get access to the academic tutors and support that student athletes get when they’re about to fail out of their D1 scholarship eligibility nor did I get access to medical assistance to help me recover from a severe fracture to my femur - I was able to get a referral to physical therapy from the surgeon and the Health center didn’t accept my insurance. I used this resource as long as I was financially able to and tried to ignore the athletes in my classes talking about the great massages they get for tight muscles. Schill raised our tuition for the Hayward Field remodel yet residence halls and other buildings on campus are in violation of ADA regulations. The AEC needs to do a serious review into their policies and ask themselves why they decided that a student who suffered from a major injury and required mobility aids for the foreseeable future was disqualified from receiving assistance.

I am furious that I have to try to reconcile the horrific trauma I underwent because some idiot at a busy and unsafe intersection decided to whip a left turn too hard without paying attention, with the desperate desire to remember the great things I’ve experienced and accomplished here at the University. When I first made this collage for Art 116, I was embarrassed to show it - it felt melodramatic, deeply personal, and really embarrassing. Following the responses from my classmates, I realized just how badly I had gotten fucked over as a student paying 40,000 dollars a year to attend this university. I hope that this act of traumadumping lights a fire under the University to review their policies and inspires other students to speak up about ableism they’ve faced on campus. I refuse to let another student, whether they were physically disabled before attending or become disabled during the school year go through what I went through.

Mental Health at the University of Oregon

willow — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 00:00:00 -0800

When asking whether students should have their mental health supported by schools at the university level, many answers can be reached. I would like to believe that many would lobby in support of students receiving help, although that may not be the case. It is my belief that universities should be required to provide support for student’s mental health to combat the epidemic of mental illness faced by the student demographic, the rigors of academia that affect mental health, and the otherwise lack of support given to young adults during difficult life transitions. University is a painstaking process, and it takes over the entire life of students who attempt it. Particularly for those who have previous mental health issues, this can be a very trying time. With the support of the school they attend, it is possible for students to succeed in both academia and their personal lives, regardless of mental health issues. At the University of Oregon specifically, I find the accommodation given to students facing mental health issues to be lacking due to personal experience and written testimonies from other students. In this essay I will explore the ways that universities should be better supporting their students to help them to succeed.

In a written testimony from a University of Oregon student published through The Student Insurgent, they outline the complete lack of care that they received from the school when they experienced a mental health crisis. During a depressive episode, they reached out to the school for help. Instead of receiving any substantial form of assistance, they were sent a suicide risk screening. Not completing the screening threatened “anything from a 72-hour psychiatric assessment to a hold on your university account. If the University of Oregon actually cared about the wellbeing of their students, they should not have to threaten them to take the steps they want them to take to keep them safe. It became abundantly clear that this policy was in place to shield the University from lawsuits. They are doing the bare minimum”¹. I have unfortunately experienced a similar situation to this one during a mental health crisis. I reached a point where I was forced to drop out for a term, and instead of receiving any sort of help or assistance I had an academic warning placed onto my account. It is highly discouraging to not be receiving any support from an institution that you are dedicating both copious amounts of time and money to. It is my belief that the University of Oregon is severely lacking in their support for students in terms of mental health assistance. Whether it be using students in training as therapists, placing stipulations around who can use the Accessible Education Center, or threatening students in crisis, the University of Oregon has a long way to go before they begin to perform effective care for their students.

Considering the fact that 77% of undergraduate students experienced moderate to severe psychological distress in 2022, it is my belief that it is not just the University of Oregon that is lacking in resources for mentally ill students². In a study done by the American College Health Association, it was found that one in four students have experienced depression in the last year. These students were also at higher risk of academic impairment, chronic pain, sinus infections, learning disabilities, and smoking habits³. The correlation between mental and physical illness is well documented, universities should be supporting their students long before they start to experience physical manifestations of their mental illnesses. College is supposed to be a time of exploration, instead students are busy trying to stay afloat. According to Zara Abrams, “students today are also juggling a dizzying array of challenges, from coursework, relationships, and adjustment to campus life to economic strain, social injustice, mass violence, and various forms of loss related to COVID-19"⁴. The expectations placed on students to balance both a healthy academic and social life while maintaining time for self-care isn’t feasible for many students struggling with mental illness, it’s hard enough for folks who don’t have any sort of mental impairments. The lack of support from universities does nothing to better the lives of these students, especially when they are a high-risk group. It is easier for universities to ignore the needs of their students and force them to turn to outside resources than provide them with the help that they so desperately need.

One effective resource that the University of Oregon has employed is the Accessible Education Center, which allows students to receive accommodations for both mental and physical disabilities. This is the only mental health resource available through the UO that I have personally found to be highly effective. Whether it be priority registration, breaks during class, or lengthened test times, the AEC has many available resources for students who struggle to keep up with a regular pace. There are, however, drawbacks to the Accessible Education Center; unless you have either a therapist’s or psychiatrist’s official diagnosis of your deficits, you cannot use the AEC. I understand that this is in hopes of making resources available to those who have been officially diagnosed, but not everybody has the privilege of being officially diagnosed. Whether it be monetary costs or lack of support, many students may not have the resources available to access the AEC. While the AEC has been helpful for me and many other students, it has not served its full potential for many others.

Some may argue that it is not the responsibility of universities to be handling the mental health of their students. There are outside resources that students can seek out, and universities have enough to handle without having to add in mental health. With this I vehemently disagree. Students spend a minimum of four years at a university, often spending multiple days a week on campus. This is not only a time investment for students, but a substantial monetary investment too. Many students are taking out loans to support themselves through college, which is a stressor in itself. Adding in the rigors of coursework on top of that, balancing a social life, and having personal time is nearly impossible. Outside resources that should be available to students are often inaccessible. For out of state students using school insurance, therapy outside of the school isn’t an option unless they pay out of pocket. From personal experience I have learned that the University of Oregon uses graduate students as therapists without informing their patients, giving them unreliable information and advice. Seeking psychiatry outside of the school without insurance costs upwards of $200 a session, not to mention the costs of medication. Students requiring higher levels of care such as intensive outpatient programs or partial hospitalization pay thousands of dollars a month for this care. Those unable to hold a job due to mental illness rely on the help of others for the essentials, much less for spendy mental health assistance. If resources aren’t offered through the universities that students spend so much time and money at, many students have no resources available to them at all. This is not only a detriment to the students, but the universities themselves. Students who are unable to care for themselves are often unable to attend their courses or do their required coursework. This is reflected in the overall averages of the school and their displayed grade point averages. If universities don’t care enough about their students to help them for the sake of their students, they should do it for the universities themselves.

Mental illness is an epidemic among the student population, and one that doesn’t receive enough recognition or assistance. Universities should be required to support their student’s mental health because of the epidemic of mental illness faced by the student demographic, the rigors of academia that affect mental health, and the otherwise lack of support given to young adults during difficult life transitions. It is my hope that this essay has helped to outline the complete lack of resources dedicated to students struggling with mental illness and some possible solutions. This is a topic near and dear to my heart as someone who has struggled with mental illness their entire life. The lack of support given to students at the university level is absolutely disheartening. I have watched many friends forced to leave this school due to the lack of support given to them, I almost had to leave the school myself for that exact reason. It is my hope that more awareness is raised for this topic and universities have a change of heart and start to care about supporting their students throughout all stages of their academic career.

Notes

Hippo, Curious. Suicide at UO: An Illusion of Care. The Student Insurgent. May, 2022. ↩︎
Bryant, Jessica & Welding, Lyss. College Student Mental Health Statistics. Best Colleges. February, 2023. ↩︎
Lindsay, Fabiano & Stark. The Prevalence and Correlates of Depression Among College Students. College Student Journal. ↩︎
Abrams, Zara. Student mental health is in crisis. Campuses are rethinking their approach. APA. October, 2022 ↩︎

The Death of Genre

Dorian Blue — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 00:00:00 -0800

In the modern age, it feels like everything has to be a hybrid, a crossover, or blend. This is true in music, literature, and film. But, it’s just an acknowledgement of the truth. The long-held idea of a literary canon is based on the opinions of the few, mostly white men. These spaces aren’t as exclusionary as they once were, though still have a long way to go. Across the board, the publishing industry is extremely white, with most counts putting the percent of white employees at 75-80%. While it used to be more overtly discriminatory, the publishing industry now likes to preach its inclusivity through virtue signaling statements. Though they may publish authors of color, in an article on LitHub, Tajja Isen points out that “with towering barricades around any port of entry, the book industry has always been complicit in marginalization.”

Ideas of genre and category always naturally change over time. While tragedy and comedy seem to persevere through the millenia, most other genres that are well-known today are more recent developments. Science fiction wasn’t a mainstay until the early 20th century. Even now, it still struggles to know its borders. Is the writing of Mary Shelley and Frank Herbert really comparable? The mystery genre has more of a lengthy history, but now has a specific formula that many readers are familiar with that now often toes the line or completely sinks into cliche.

Creatives always need to do something novel to make themselves stand out from the crowd. While everything is derivative in some way, as nothing is made in a vacuum, adding a new spin or take on something is what can bring in an audience. As always, capitalism has its own role in this. When a new book is being marketed, the author and publisher take pains to explain how interesting the book is. It’s their job, and their livelihood may rest on it. However, nine times out of ten, the supposed “reinvention” or “fresh look” being proposed is engineered to be palatable for the largest common denominator.

For example, a book that claims it’s a newer, more exciting romance is often the same old shit. It falls into the genre perfectly, but creates the illusion that it doesn’t for added prestige. Anyone who’s critical may not be fazed by it, but its target audience will eat it up. Awkward prose and unorganized narrative structure don’t matter if it taps into the right niche of TikTok. In play acting as new and revolutionary, trope-y books overshadow actually inventive novels.

There have been many books published that highlight issues of racism within the industry itself. This is a hallmark of any industry that profits off creative works. There are also many films that spotlight stories of discrimination in Hollywood, but the systems in place stay largely unchanged. “The absorption of dissent isn’t surprising; loosening the valve to release a little built-up tension is a time-honored tactic that lets the status quo carry on unchecked.” Isen uses this apt metaphor to describe how anything can be profitable. Even if thought-provoking, it can’t change the system all on its own.

Humans seek to categorize, but to what avail? I think that genre shouldn’t be done away with entirely, but should be recognized for what it is: a series of arbitrary constructs dictated by a few people who have little care or understanding for the real world and the complexity within it.

The Nostalgia Playlist

The Student Insurgent — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 00:00:00 -0800

H4N SW0LO – The Imperial March (H4N SW0L0 Midtempo Bass Remix)

Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra – Avant Title BGM Opening

Ladysmith Black Mambazo – This Little Light of Mine (Bonus Track)

Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru – Homesickness, Pt. 1-2

Macklemore & Ryan Lewis (feat. Ray Dalton) – Can’t Hold Us

Eartha Kitt – I’d Rather Be Burned As A Witch

Yusef / Cat Stevens – If You Want To Sing Out, Sing Out

Britney Spears – Toxic

Sarah Vaughan – A Lover’s Concerto

Nicki Minaj – Super Bass

P-Square – Do Me

Rihanna – Umbrella

Camille – Le Festin

Wu-Tang Clan – A Better Tomorrow

Bastille – Pompeii

The Clash – Lost in the Supermarket

Nina Simone – Feeling Good

Julie London – Why Don’t You Do Right

Cab Calloway – St James’ Infirmary

Etta James – At Last

James Brown – Prisoner of Love

Brown Eyed Girls – Abracadabra

The Ink Spots – My Prayer

Ray Charles – Hit the Road Jack

Daniel Kahn – Tsu Di Arbeter Froyen

Al Green – Let’s Stay Together

The Cranberries – Zombie

JID – Money

Billie Holiday – Solitude

LCD Soundsystem – American Dream

Yellopain – Happy Thanksgiving

The City Lines – Erased

N’we Jinan Artists – Never Say Die

Riad Awwad – I’m From Jerusalem

DeBarge – I Like It

Makimakkuk – Tartaqa

Los Gondos – Eyes Wide Open On The Nile

Beautiful Chorus – Pachamamma (Expanded)

Ella Fitzgerald – Old McDonald

Trini Lopez – If I Had a Hammer

Enya – Shepherd Moons

M83 – Midnight City

Amahla – Ça Suffit

Nostalgia – The Hero

liljan2k1 – nostalgia.mp3

Yung Wunda – Change

Speech From the Free Palestine Solidarity Rally and March at the Eugene Federal Courthouse

Eric Howanietz — Sat, 21 Oct 2023 00:00:00 -0700

Every single attempt at non-violent resistance has been brutally crushed by the Israeli Army. Twenty years ago, I went to Palestine and helped organize resistance to a military occupation. I participated in scores of direct actions and protests with hundreds of international activists from around the world. All these sincere attempts at protest were met with a military response from the Israeli Army.

The occupation continued.

Injustice festered. It built edifices of hate. It built a prison infrastructure of walls and surveillance around every village. It fortified hilltops with armed reactionary zealots and gave them the full support of a nearly invincible modern army. It cut down olive trees, destroyed wells, demolished houses, terrorized the streets, and imprisoned, tortured, & murdered generations of youth.

The occupation continued.

I lived with the most hospitable people I had ever known. I was given respect and unquestioning sanctuary from the most educated & intellectual people in the Middle East. I saw most of the energy of the Palestinian people focused on two things, the education of their people, and the cultivation of their land.

Students would brave any oppression they faced, climb over any mountain path to complete an exam, or wait at checkpoints for hours to attend class. No tank could ever stop the school day in Palestine, even if getting to class meant running through machine gun fire, breathing tear gas, or being shot in class itself when an Israeli soldier raked a school with fire.

Farmers harvested olives from trees their families owned for hundreds of years. Every year right wing settlers would descend from the hilltops to brutalize Palestinian farmers, all the while as the Israeli army watched, nay laughed at the injustice and theft occurring. Harvests were stolen, thousand-year-old olive trees were cut down, people were beaten to a pulp, Israeli snipers killed with impunity. Every year the Palestinian farmers stood their ground on their land and came to peacefully harvest olives.

The occupation continued.

At one time Gaza was the most liberal part of Palestine with mini-skirts and belly dancers a common sight. Intellectuals and leftists organized, wrote radical theory, and built a solid argument against the colonial project that is Israel. Every other nation in the world, other than America, came to condemn the actions of Israel against the Palestinians. The balance had shifted, the argument was turning, the days of plain hijacking and hostage taking were coming to a close. Everyone now knew Palestine existed, everyone agreed that Palestine existed. The Israeli right wing was desperate, the Palestinian right wing was marginal. And so, the Israeli right wing helped the Palestinian right wing, and one justified the other. That’s not a conspiracy theory, it’s a historical reality.

And when a militarized right-wing Israel had its way, every Palestinian leftist or moderate that could run a war crimes trial, organize a general strike, accurately report the news, or even launch a guerrilla liberation movement, was imprisoned or assassinated.

The occupation continued.

Now I’m here twenty years after I discovered that everything I was told as an American about the Palestinian people was a lie. They are beautiful people, but even more, they are the bravest people I have ever known. This is not my opinion alone; this impression comes mostly from the South African international activist I worked with. Many South African activists came to Palestine, with their own country freshly out of Apartheid, they and understood exactly what was going on.

I have many friends from Gaza, and they are poets, doctors, and engineers who know love. But when the walls of the world’s largest open-air prison with the highest population density on earth were breached, horrible rage poured forth.

The occupation has continued, its continuation is the root of all events that have transpired.

If we cannot recognize the tsunami of hypocrisy America stands in, then there is no doubt that everything we have seen will continue to repeat itself. We must join the global consensus in condemning Israel’s actions against the Palestinians over the last 75 years.

When we stopped funding South Africa, negotiations to end Apartheid started in earnest and resolved without widespread bloodshed. It’s up to us as Americans to create similar conditions and force this American client state to make concessions, allow Palestinians to return, and end this conflict. Not only could it begin a lasting peace in the Middle East, but it could be the geo-political beginning of the end of fossil fuel dependence. Palestine is the key to politically unraveling the greatest crisis the world has ever known.

End the occupation of Palestine.

Solidarity,

Eric Howanietz

Former President of UO Students United for Palestinian Equal Rights (SUPER)

At the 10/21 rally where this speech was given, a white supremacist agitator showed up and pulled a weapon. Nobody was shot, but in the chaos a comrade was hurt trying to get away from the dangerous situation.

To support Erica’s recovery, Venmo: @Spencer-McIntyre

Book Review: Environmental Blockades

anonymous — Sun, 01 Oct 2023 00:00:00 -0700

Terania Creek, a rainforest under threat from logging, Australia, 1979: hippies swarm worksites, spike trees, sabotage or sit in front of dozers, play a sort of honor-system treesitting game, barricade roads, tie trees together with cable, pour gasoline near illegally parked cop cars and divert a creek to flood the road, all while keeping their spirits high with omm circles, communal kitchens and childcare.

Environmental Blockades: Obstructive Direct Action and the History of the Environmental Movement, published in 2021, “aims to inform the theoretical and practical concerns of both [activists and academics].” Author Iain McIntyre refuses to let histories of resistance be forgotten or unexamined, as shown by his previous book How To Make Trouble and Influence People.

McIntyre starts with Terania Creek, continuing chronologically with more forest defense, anti-mining and dam construction struggles in Australia. He then follows with chapters in the United States and Canada — tracing movements’ evolution from their first salvos in environmental direct action to the establishment of a common ‘repertoire,’ a tactical playbook, within each country.

Environmental Blockades succeeds in two ways: as movement history with fleshed-out sections on particular campaigns, and as an academic analysis of a particular set of tactics, how they arise, spread, and are solidified into a ‘repertoire of contention.’ McIntyre keeps the story arcs moving forward as he highlights the dynamics of tactical choice and innovation at play in each campaign. Academic books on social movement theory sometimes lack relevance to small group rowdy actions or front line environmental campaigns. This book bridges the gap between those drier texts and the inspiring, yet informal campaign narratives of journalists and participants.

Thankfully, McIntyre borrows more academic terms than he coins, ‘Obstructive Direct Action’ or ODA, being his major contribution. This is an umbrella term for physically disruptive tactics, which can be further categorized as soft blockades, barricades, ’enhanced vulnerability’ (another original term, technical elaborations to the ‘soft’ strategy: lockdowns, tripods, and treesits for example), and sabotage. However, the author’s main aim is not to classify tactics, it is to understand how and why certain tactics are invented, adopted or rejected, spread beyond their origins, and normalized into a movement’s toolbox. To this end, the book describes three types of ‘diffusion’ or spreading of innovation: direct diffusion, indirect diffusion and_ brokerage_._ _Direct diffusion takes place face-to-face or through correspondence. Indirect diffusion includes any kind of publishing, including mainstream media depictions. Brokerage is used to describe the spread of innovations through the direct contact between entire groups- exemplified by the 80’s ‘Nomadic Action Groups’ of Australia and the US.

McIntyre observes that “the diffusion of counter-tactics [ie, methods used to neutralize activists’ tactics,] between different regions and the pace of innovation were generally much lower [between police forces] than among protesters.” However, the exceptions to this trend are significant. For example, the Northern Lights Task Force, an interagency law enforcement grouping, compiled lessons the cops learned from one pipeline protest, Standing Rock, in order to suppress Line 3 resistance, a later one. Agency cooperation may be more likely with megaprojects. This counter-diffusion can also have a chilling effect, where innovators choose not to document or share their creations, in order to maintain the edge locally as long as possible. To that end, direct diffusion and brokerage may be preferable over generating media, which risks feeding counter-diffusion.

In contrast, people figure something out in response to urgent local circumstances, yet without broad sympathies, they may never ask themselves, “Where else could this work? Who else would want to know?” Concerted efforts at diffusion seem much rarer than incidental, sporadic contacts.

Near the conclusion, the author states that “tactical diversity peaked in the late 1990’s, the point by which detailed environmental blockading manuals had been released. Although innovation has continued to occur, the main development since this time has been in the diffusion of tactics first developed in [Australia, the US, Canada and the UK] to other places and movements.” Why? Is the field so narrow that the total number of unique tactics really are that limited? This assertion is the books’ most chilling reality check.

McIntyre stops short of making specific recommendations or highlighting unsolved issues. Understandably, the author focuses on tactical choice, to the exclusion of full treatments of strategy and organization. At times, the analysis is too casual or brief; close reading, and writing in the margins may be required to notice all of the points he’s making.

The book itself poses an issue with diffusion. A year ago, I intended to write this review but stalled out on reading the free PDF from Libgen. Hard copies are only available new, for ~$45. As-is, it’s not practical to print at home as a zine. That’s just one of many small, yet solvable diffusion problems.

This book might be most helpful to anyone who’s been frustrated by a lack of tactical options, or confused with how to use things in their toolbox. It could be useful to hard-skills trainers who care about context and not just detail. Anyone in school, unconnected, or just curious about different ideas might find it interesting. Of course, it’s highly recommended to wild souls with an irrepressible urge to innovate, elaborate and experiment.

Film Review: Le Diable Probablement (The Devil, Probably)

Brigham — Sun, 01 Oct 2023 00:00:00 -0700

“Do you know when civilization ends? It’s when stupidity is accelerated.”

I think stupidity could easily be replaced by selfishness here, but either way this sentiment rings true in contemporary American society as much as it did in France during 1977. People are so caught up in their prescribed livelihoods that they’re unable to recognize what they’re actually doing. Our young protagonist, Charles, recognizes this fact, but rather than accept his absence of control over the situation, he finds himself in an endless loop of despair and lack of solutions rooted in modern livelihoods being directed towards the attainment of money. His nihilism affirms itself in the worst possible way, as it is applicable to any situation through a repurposed perspective. To be frank, in terms of ethics, it’s the easy way out. As Albert Camus once wrote:

“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide” (The Myth of Sisyphus).

Rather than committing to a pragmatic activism through the mitigation of local environmental issues like Michel, Charles disregards the entire problem as meaningless due to the ultimate collective end point of human experience: death. We see the overwhelming damage people have done to the world in the opening sequence, but that leads to a less than satisfactory explanation as to why Charles ends his life in the face of this terror. Everyone has to face this reality, but the lens he has placed on the world has ingrained a constant sense of despair into his life, and his refusal to find solace in any aspect of his life is incredibly damaging to him and the people around him. He ultimately becomes just another tragic image in a world full of them, with the motivating factor being his recognition of the fact that even the life of his therapist is guided by the very thing he resents.

“When you look at someone through rose-colored glasses, all the red flags just look like flags” (_Bojack Horseman, _S2E10 Yes And).

Charles is doomed from the start in his pursuit of meaning and its subsequent contentment because he refuses to see the very real goodness in front of him. One cannot be fulfilled in the present moment when they view that moment as a constant lack. The film itself is a commentary on nihilism versus beauty. A society cannot be held as completely hopeless if the work of art we just consumed is so beautiful in itself, even if it did happen to make money. All films are portraits of life, so any direction found within a stream of moving pictures can be understood as a newfound perspective on life.

“If my aim was money and profit, everyone would respect me.” This is Charles’ response to his lack of purpose, and as he begins to read through the standardized, predetermined life of the masses written out in some sort of publication, I cannot help but see a reflection of my generation in the even later stages of hyper-capitalist society. Our thoughts have been largely manipulated, or in extreme cases imprisoned, by mass media, with the only motivating forces in many people’s lives being money or blissful ignorance to the glaring inequalities plaguing our system. The only sane people today are the ones with anxiety and depression. How could you not feel some sort of dread looking into such a dim future? In a world that is more militarized, has greater wealth discrepancies, and is closer to environmental collapse than ever before, it’s no wonder that the number of suicides is equally as unprecedented.

But Camus ultimately found in his musings that suicide is simply a cessation of life, and not a solution to the problem of absurdity. Denying the meaninglessness of death is just as pointless as killing yourself since you are simply avoiding the confrontation altogether. Death is alternatively the source of meaning, since the actions taken within a finite existence have more innate value than an eternal one.

Charles removed the possibility of his survival when he put his agency in the hands of another, and before he dies we see he isn’t ready; he has more to say, as everyone does when they are alive. Charles is haunted because the word value virtually no longer exists without a relationship to currency. We can’t have blind hope that the future we will soon inhabit can be a reality void of money, but we also can’t be consumed by despair that it is an impossibility. All we can do is act within our own capacities, generating meaning and genuine change within the spheres of life we find ourselves in.

We are losing our humanity at the hands of the people society has placed on pedestals for what reason? The number in their bank account? Any objective lens that has been placed on people to place us in a hierarchy is inherently flawed in its attempt, especially when the history tied to that value plays a bigger role than an actor in the present day. It is a shame that so many people cannot come to terms with the fact their life has been reduced to a number, their existence as a statistic.

“I don’t wanna be a slave or a specialist,” Charles laments as he sits in his leather chair. The therapist diagnoses Charles with depression, further standardizing and dehumanizing the man he is trying to provide care for. So much modern therapy and psychological medicine is treated as a mechanic for your heart and mind. Any anxieties or existential concerns must be muted out by drugs to keep everyone in accordance with the ultimate goal of productivity. We work minimum wage jobs that have higher demand, both mentally and physically, than the people making millions. Meanwhile, the AI we are developing finds itself exploring the world of art and poetry. Where the FUCK did we go wrong?

We strive to achieve or perceive something beautiful, but we are simultaneously discouraged to truly explore our own psyches, so many people are left to find beauty in the realm of greed and indulgence. Whether that be the repetitive nature of a bus door opening and closing, discussing the nature of religion in an empty church, or sitting by the water listening to an aspiring flute player, those who still possess some sense of sanity will always desire the beautiful. In a world increasingly stripped of its humanity, we must cling on to the little we have left inside of us. The only way we feel anything is by being alive to do so.

If life is meaningless, then death is senseless…

and money is The Devil, Probably.

GTFF Funeral for UO's Public Promise

Adrian A. — Sun, 01 Oct 2023 00:00:00 -0700

On Friday, October 13th, the UO chapter of the GTFF (Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation) held a mock funeral to mourn the death of UO’s Public Promise, followed by a practice picket outside the Knight Library. From @gtff3544 on Instagram: “UO has failed its commitment to the public by refusing to pay education workers fairly, and we’re fighting to change that.”

My Plea to a World That Won't Give Me a Voice: Discussing Palestine and how you can help

Salem Khoury — Sun, 01 Oct 2023 00:00:00 -0700

We cannot speak or we will be criticized. Our words are twisted around to be unrecognizable. We cannot grieve before losing more to horrific oppression. We cannot avoid the articles with titles like: “‘The hospital yard is filled with corpses,’ says Gaza medical director.” We don’t get to walk around our hometown without a deep rooted paranoia following us. The question echoes in my mind, but it’s almost too much to consider: “What would they do if they knew who I was?”

This is one of the most frightening times to be Arab, let alone Palestinian, and it has never been harder to combat the Zionist propaganda that has overtaken my phone and the world around me. People everywhere are scared, and they are struggling to continue searching for a reality that doesn’t seem to exist: a world where Palestinians are free to exist in their homeland without the threat of violence, ethnic cleansing, ongoing apartheid practices, and over 75 years of genocide. This is a world that hasn’t been afforded the right to effectively grieve.

Even talking about Palestine is increasingly challenging in Western society. As a Palestinian, I must educate but not overwhelm anyone. I must know all the details but shield the public from the cruelty occurring in real time; and because of this I have to hinder sincere discussion of occupation, death, and brutal acts of racism. If we are to be allowed to talk about Palestine, we must be the expert. We are forced to detach emotionally from our connection to the subject and act as objective reporters, preferring Western “vetted” voices, rather than indigenous ones and avoiding any source that could be labeled biased or provocative. We are required to satisfy the never-ending demand for palatable rhetoric, while processing the most disturbing realities in solitude.

Palestine needs a network of outspoken support in order to properly reflect the reality of what is occurring in Gaza. But even if we acquired the right platform, evading boycott and censorship is nearly impossible. Palestine forever remains on the defensive. We plead with the media for objective engagement with our reality and with those who possess a multitude of outreach tactics. But when they finally report on the situation, it’s not produced for Palestine; it is produced to capture more attention to false accounts, short-term histories, or Israeli-centric perspectives. It is a common occurrence for the media to modify aspects of the story in order to produce a provocative narrative. By doing so, they gain more influence through exploiting the crisis to the public. These misleading sources lead to a never-ending battle to defend our reputation and the suppression of any opportunity to speak on any relevant histories or provide sufficient context.

We solely bear the destruction of the misguided words and framing of other biased news and social media bullies. It is evident that an endless supply of false information can be conjured up by powerful governments and their willing supplicants to spin a completely different narrative on the struggle of occupation and apartheid against one marginalized group of people.

Nevertheless, this is not the time to be bowing our heads and succumbing to the negativity. There is hope to be found in grassroots, local organizations such as the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). Student voices have been and will remain a spark for positive change.

Let me be clear. Palestine’s quest for self-determination and freedom is not “too nuanced to understand.” It is easy for casual spectators far removed from the setting to dismiss the severity of the situation, saying “it’s too complicated,” or “an endless cycle of violence.” Settler-colonial occupation is quite simple in its aims of marginalization and even extermination of indigenous populations. Israel’s persistent and well-documented violations of the Geneva Conventions, UN resolutions, and other facets of international law is not subject to interpretation. The crime of apartheid, imposed on millions of Palestinians, has been transparently demonstrated, and indeed, continually refined, since Israel’s founding in 1948.

Palestine is an uncomfortable topic for the majority of people who put distance between themselves and the news that is produced. That kind of mindset is simply not possible for the situation at hand. That guilt that comes from a lack of knowledge manifests as insecurity, which pushes people further from wanting to engage, but the fact remains that it is a completely avoidable mindset.

Western society, in which we are prompted to educate, demands an impossibly high caliber of report on how we engage in this conflict, putting pressure on the research and depths we must dive into. Despite this, learning about Palestine doesn’t have to be a subject that people fear or avoid. Start here.

Listen to first person accounts of those living through occupation or finding news sources that are helpful and free of corporate backing to give our struggle a voice. If we navigate through the misinformation more diligently, we can pave the path to understanding. We must work hard to explore what can be done in relief of the blatant oppression at hand.

That barrier of communication that exists between the citizens of the U.S. and Palestine is detrimental to the cause. We do not have the ability to combat every piece of misinformation but a larger concern is that we have no audience. This paints a picture that the world does not care about us and does not want to hear from us. From the view of the media and our elected officials, it appears that Palestinian lives just do not matter. How can we spread our voice and our support to a population that tunes us out?

Palestine has been hurting for over 75 years, and there is no justice in sight. Rather, Israel continues its violent projects and decimates my homeland in their ongoing effort to either ethnically cleanse or squeeze the fight out of my people.

I will not sit by and watch as the citizens of Palestine are dying and Palestinians across the globe are being muzzled from expressing their outrage towards the Israeli government’s genocide against innocents. If you want to help or start to understand what can be done now, start by educating yourself with resources, such as reliefweb.int, visualizingpalestine.org, decolonizepalestine.com, mondoweiss.net, or 972mag.com.

Even if you don’t have all the right words, voice your opposition to Israeli occupation with your representatives and senators, attend rallies, speak to Palestinians, and show the people of Palestine–especially Gaza– that they are not going unheard. It is never too late to involve yourself if you feel confused, hopeless, or at a loss of what to do. There will always be someone out there who wants to listen and make an effort. So, I urge you, listen to Palestine and know that we are suffering, but remain vigilant, as we continue searching for a reality where liberation is within our reach.

Peacehealth Die-In Protest

Brigham — Sun, 01 Oct 2023 00:00:00 -0700

On Friday, October 13th, members of the Eugene and University of Oregon community gathered in front of the PeaceHealth University District Hospital to protest the proposed closing of the only major medical center proximate to the U of O and downtown Eugene. The nearest hospital for nearly 200,000 residents will now be Riverbend Hospital in Springfield, which is nearly an additional 15 minute journey compared to the current commute.

I talked to Chris Rompala, a staff nurse at Riverbend and the chair of the Oregon Nurses Association bargaining team, to get a better idea of why this protest was happening, and the symbolism of the “die-in” method.

“The intent of this action is to show PeaceHealth executives that our community does really need these resources. We plan to lay for 15 minutes, because that’s about the amount of time it takes to get to Riverbend.”

As Rajeev Ravisankar, a member of the Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation (GTFF) brought up during his time at the podium, this 15 minutes may seem miniscule on its face, but the consequences are, as both he and Chris put it, “dire.”

“From the time that it could take to get to the hospital especially on high-traffic days to the added pressures on ambulance services to the delays in receiving care in overburdened emergency rooms with long wait times and short staffing.”

Chris also addressed this subsequent effect of PeaceHealth’s decision, “the longer it takes to receive adequate care, the more dire the situation ends up being for the patients.”

Awareness of the impact that this closing will have on not only the student population, but the general populace as well, is vital in combating this catastrophe of an executive decision. These reactions are not overreactions in the slightest, as the drastic effects of this measure will not be fully understood until they are felt.

When I inquired as to the reasoning behind the PeaceHealth executives’ decision, the answer was anything but surprising.

“They told us it’s because of money…they have been closing rooms in our facility for at least the last year.”

Chelsea Swift, a representative of CAHOOTS (Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets), a non-criminal emergency response team in Eugene, touched on the hypocrisy of a not-for-profit hospital with surplus funds at their disposal looking to close down a location that has a dire need for the medical care it provides. Not only does this affect those going to the University District Hospital, but it also means lost jobs for the workers who, just recently, signed a union deal for the upcoming year.

“We live in a county with a suicide rate 65% higher than the national average with some of the highest youth suicide rates in the country. Does it seem reasonable to close down our psychiatric emergency room? No. We are out here supporting nurses and hospital workers, who had just secured a year’s long union contract just days before PeaceHealth turned around and told the same workers they were shutting down their workplace. Does that seem respectable or reasonable? No. PeaceHealth claims they operate UDH at a loss, but this so-called non-profit healthcare corporation has 8 billion dollars in their bank account, and their CEO Liz Dunn makes 6.2 million dollars a year. Does that seem fair or reasonable to you? No.”

Chelsea speaks not only to this specific instance of corporate greed leading to a major sacrifice made on the behalf of everyday citizens here in Eugene, but also to the healthcare crisis plaguing those in need of affordable medical care across the country. The placement of capital over human need is abhorrent, but has become a norm. Chelsea touches on this point elegantly as well, as a flurry of supporting honks canvas the background of her convictions.

“As someone who brings sick and struggling patients into this hospital every single shift that I work, I am not interested in playing the game of what is reasonable or not. I’m not interested in living in a county whose healthcare system is dictated by capital and profit in the first place. This is about right and wrong, and this is about life or death. The decision makers of the ruling class are always asking poor and working people to be reasonable, as they disrespect us, degrade us, and reject our expertise in favor of a bottom line, consultant recommendations, and law and order. I am asking everyone here today to not let go of the fear, the sadness, or the anger that you felt when you first heard about the decision to close this hospital, because those responses are reasonable.”

To follow along with this ongoing dispute and for information on further actions you can take to show your support, visit www.oregonrn.org/page/SaveEugenesHospital.

Queer and Bright Red

Dorian Blue — Sun, 01 Oct 2023 00:00:00 -0700

Released in 1971, the Belgian film Daughters of Darkness is an interesting example of queerness in the horror genre. I watched it on recommendation of my dad, a film guy who knows my love of everything lesbian and vampire. From the start, I was intrigued by the spare opening credits, white text on a black background. They are accompanied by a haunting, empty melody plucked out on electric guitar. The combination creates a feeling of emptiness and foreboding. When the title is shown, everything morphs to crimson red, staying that way until the beginning of the first scene, which plunges the viewer into deep indigo night.

A newlywed couple, Stefan and Valerie, are eloping together. They’re on a train to the beach town they are honeymooning and it’s already obvious that their relationship is shaky. Stefan is older than her and both are hesitant to fully profess their love. Valerie is also concerned about Stefan’s mother, who is part of the British aristocracy, and what she might think of their marriage. Stefan continues to dismiss all her concerns, quoting his mother, saying: “Stefan, we are different. That is God’s gift to us. We must never debase it.” Then, he kisses Valerie, trying to show her that he doesn’t care what his mother thinks. Though, she isn’t convinced. She makes him promise to call her when they reach the hotel.

Stefan and Valerie arrive in the town in the dead of winter. Their surroundings are gray and drab, with the sound of screeching sea birds the only constant. The inside of the hotel they’re staying in, however, is full of color. The concierge is the only other person in the hotel with them, as they are there very out of season. They eat dinner together in the empty dining room, a wide shot showing how vast the lines of empty tables are.

Shadowed in darkness, another car arrives. A woman clad in all black steps out from the back, complete with a mesh veil over her face. Immediately, she’s captivating. She has platinum blonde hair, pencil thin brows, and red lipstick, commanding the attention of the concierge. He’s shook to his core, as she looks exactly the same as she did twenty years before. Her name? Countess Elizabeth Bathory, the name of a real noblewoman who is said to have tortured and killed hundreds of people for her own pleasure. The Countess was styled to echo Marlene Dietrich, famous Old Hollywood actress. Dietrich was known for her androgynous style; it was also an open secret that she was bisexual.

Countess Bathory notices the couple in the dining room and sets her sights on them.

“Look how perfect they are,” she remarks to her companion, Ilona. Then, she becomes fixated on them.

It isn’t Stefan the Countess concerned with, though. Her attention is wholly on Valerie, who is already drawn to her. Valerie wears white throughout the film and is portrayed as naive, an obvious foil for the Countess, who exclusively wears black, red, and purple.

The bright and highly saturated color palette is contrasted with the dark desires of Elizabeth. In many ways, she’s the female manifestation of Dracula, also based on a mass-murdering historical figure. The film also has many plot beats that resemble Carmilla, a novel released twenty years prior to Dracula that tells the story of the vampire Carmilla seducing a noblewoman Laura.

In a heavy-handed, eroticized way,Daughters of Darkness explores the ties between being monstrous and being queer. Step by step, Elizabeth seduces Valerie, while also enacting carnage on the town. Everyone, including the mysterious Stefan, has dark urges within him, and Valerie is batted between them like prey in a cat’s paws. Though the convoluted, often labyrinthine, plot leaves a lot to be desired, the film delivers on aesthetics. Every shot is composed with a painter’s eye, influenced by Expressionism and Surrealism. The viewer, just like Valerie, is drawn into a web of despair and bloodlust

R.A.D Mental Health Benefit Show

haze — Sun, 01 Oct 2023 00:00:00 -0700

Saturday, October 7th marked the second annual Mental Health Awareness Benefit punk show put on by Radical Alternative Development (R.A.D.) Eugene. From noon til late, skaters, punks, bands, community orgs and hundreds of people of all ages hung out at the Washington Jefferson skate park to celebrate, build community, and share resources.

The Student Insurgent spent the day distributing our past issues, meeting rad people, having great conversations, and enjoying the music. Courtesy of R.A.D. Eugene, here’s a few photos from the event, which was a definitive success.

Photos provided by R.A.D.

The Left's Russia Problem

ch0ccyra1n — Sun, 01 Oct 2023 00:00:00 -0700

Art by Petro Martynuik (Public Domain)

This is not an essay about the far-right’s relationship with the Russian state, as plenty of other journalists have already covered this, and re-hashing it here wouldn’t be worth your time. This is actually about the pro-russia and pro-”peace” rhetoric that has infected every tendency of the left, particularly though not exclusively in western¹ countries. I’ll primarily be focusing on two particular types of pro-Russia leftists and attempting to understand their arguments and reasoning, as well as naming names as far as organizations that fall into these camps.

The Unapologetic Pro-Russia Left

Firstly, looking at the unapologetic pro-Russia left, there aren’t that many large organizations that fit this bill, but they tend to be almost entirely of a Marxist-Leninist (or let’s be honest, Stalinist) tendency. Some ‘democratic socialist’ organizations such as the African National Congress² in South Africa also fit into this camp. The primary argument they make is that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and more broadly any actions of the Russian state are actions for the purpose of countering American imperialism. The expansion of NATO into Eastern European countries since the fall of the Warsaw Pact in 1989 is often cited to explain this, as it is seen as a violation of Russia’s sphere of influence. The problem with this viewpoint is that it rests on some faulty assumptions that are simply untrue. Firstly, it should be noted in contrast to the assumption that the post-Soviet expansion of NATO was a hostile takeover, the reason why countries in Eastern Europe largely joined NATO following the collapse of the Warsaw Pact was to protect themselves from future Russian aggression.

Regardless of whether or not NATO is truly a defensive alliance in its entirety, it certainly is from the perspective of those who would prefer not to be under the boot of yet another Russian Empire. Another faulty assumption of the unapologetic pro-Russia left is that two wrongs somehow make a right. One example of imperialism does not justify another imperialism. A “multipolar world” is not really any better, because now there are more empires when the goal is ostensibly the abolition of empire entirely. Invading a country in “defense” is hardly different from the “preemptive strikes” of other empires such as the United States or the British Empire. In short, the unapologetic pro-Russia left bases their support for an empire on perhaps the shakiest ground for an ostensibly left-wing grouping.

The ‘Both Sides’ Left

This one is a lot harder to write about, but also more common from my experiences interacting with leftists both in-person and online. An example of the type of argument made is that of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who while condemning Russia, which is a step above the Unapologetic Pro-Russia Left, he creates a false equivalence, stating, “This guy [Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy] is as responsible as Putin for the war. Because in the war, there’s not just one person guilty.”³

In order to understand what’s wrong with this, it is important to consider the history between Russia and Ukraine. In the year 1764, the Cossack Hetmanate, located in what is now northern and central Ukraine, was fully annexed into the Russian Empire. It remained under Russian imperial dominion, with a significant program of settler-colonialism known as Russification until 1917, when it declared a short-lived independence in the form of a state entity, the Ukrainian People’s Republic. The Republic was led primarily by the Socialist Revolutionary Party, and the Free Territory of Ukraine. It was an attempt by anarcho-communists to establish a stateless and classless society. Ultimately, this was short-lived however, as the Bolsheviks crushed both movements, in spite of the latter initially siding with them in the wider Russian Civil War.

Now is a good point to bring up Vladimir Lenin’s definition of Imperialism, which as the title of the work of the same name suggests, is “The Highest Stage of Capitalism”. The core of Lenin’s argument is that imperialism is by definition, a product of capitalism. This was certainly convenient for him, as he (and those who subscribe to his definition of imperialism) could argue that the Soviet invasions of countries such as Ukraine, Finland, the Baltic States, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan were not imperialist because after all, only capitalist states can do imperialism. What then, might be a better definition that accounts for the fact that not all empires were capitalist or motivated solely by the accumulation of profit? Imperialism could be better defined as “when a state pursues the conquest of other territories, and [reaches] the status of a superpower,”⁴ Using this definition, we can then understand that Ukraine is a former colony of the Russian and later Soviet Empire. Once we understand this, it is no longer feasible to draw such a false equivalence, as Lula and so many others on the left do, between Ukraine and Russia in the context of the current invasion. One side is an empire fighting for the “Russian World”, the other is not. Are so-called ‘anti-imperialists’ seriously going to not support a fight against an empire? I would certainly hope not.

The Lack of Empathy and What We Can Do About It

This sort of stuff really should not have been a ‘debate’ in the first place. The people of Ukraine are suffering immensely right now as you are reading this, facing everything from airstrikes on their homes to the horrors of occupation, and there are still some on the left trying to be apologists about it. Do these apologists seriously lack any empathy? This is absolutely shameful, and I sincerely hope that those who genuinely stand for the oppressed peoples of the world consistently will reject this apologist nonsense. Remaining silent on this issue for this long has been my biggest regret as a member of The Student Insurgent, and for that I apologize. Please consider visiting https://edist.ro/solidarity and reading up further as well as providing actual support to those resisting the resurgence of the Russian Empire as much as you can.

Notes

The term “western” is vague, but for the purposes of this essay, it refers to the territories controlled by states in North America, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Australia and New Zealand ↩︎
The ANC Youth League sent several members on jets owned by the Russian Air Force to the oblasts of Crimea, Donetsk, and Zaporizhia as foreign observers of the ‘referendums’: https://www.info-res.org/post/explainer-the-foreign-observers-behind-ukraine-s-sham-referendums ↩︎
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/brazils-lula-says-zelenskiy-as-responsible-putin-ukraine-war-2022-05-04/ ↩︎
https://www.anarchistfederation.net/misconceptions-about-imperialism-and-anarchist-collective-traumas/ ↩︎

The Spooky Playlist

The Student Insurgent — Sun, 01 Oct 2023 00:00:00 -0700

Listen on Spotify

Andrew Gold – Spooky, Scary Skeletons (cuz obviously)

Sisters of Mercy – Black Planet

The Cramps – I Was a Teenage Werewolf

Sonic Youth – Halloween

Selofan – Billie Was a Vampire

Bauhaus – Dark Entries

Type O Negative – Christian Woman

Screamin Jay Hawkins – I Put a Spell on You

Eartha Kitt – I Want to Be Evil

The Cure – A Forest

Julia Romana – Blood Be Fluid

Glass Spells – Thrills

Twin Tribes - Fantasmas

Molchat Doma – Тоска (Melancholy)

The Cure – Lovesong

Type O Negative – Love You to Death

Siouxsie and the Banshees – Dear Prudence

Depeche Mode – Blasphemous Rumors

Nine Inch Nails – Dead Souls

Lacuna Coil – Heaven is a Lie

Camp Blu – Bloody Kisses

Mareux – Night Vision

Horror Vacui – Lost

Night Club – Die in the Disco

Sad Madona – Cemetery

French Police – Club de Vampiros

Crosses – Initiation

Big Thief – Vampire Empire

Sir Babygirl – Haunted House

Boy Harsher – Motion

Bauhaus – Silent Hedges

serpentwithfeet – four ethers

I Monster – Lust for a Vampyr

Depeche Mode – Strangelove

AFI – Love Like Winter

Goblin Cock – Something Haunted

Type O Negative – Black No.1

Celtic Frost – Os Abysmi Vel Daath

Bauhaus – Stigmata Martyr

The Birthday Party – Release the Bats

Mortician – Witches Coven

The Cure – Lullaby

Soilent Green – Build Fear

Donovan – Season of the Witch

Crone Visions – Hex

Florence and the Machine – Seven Devils

Varsovia – Ellos quieren sangre

Tears For Fears – Watch Me Bleed

Norma Tanega – You’re Dead

Daniel Johnston – Devil Town

Sneaker Pimps – Small Town Witch

Yves Tumor – Echolalia

Rob Zombie – Dragula

My Chemical Romance – Vampires Will Never Hurt You

Cocteau Twins – Pitch the Baby

She Wants Revenge – Written in Blood

Scary Bitches – Lesbian Vampyres From Outer Space

the bird and the bee – Witch

Bobby Pickett – Monster Mash

Art by Alexa

United We Bargain, Divided We Beg

Dorian Blue — Sun, 01 Oct 2023 00:00:00 -0700

On October 20th, University of Oregon Student Workers (UOSW) and the Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation (GTFF) held a joint rally outside Johnson Hall to demonstrate their collective power and call for solidarity between undergrad and grad student workers.

For GTFF, the rally marked the latest stage of their bargaining process with UO for a new contract. Their main demands are across-the-board salary increases to address unprecedented cost-of-living increases in Eugene, better resources and support for international students and caregivers, and better discrimination protections. After seven months of continuous bargaining, GTFF and UO administration have reached an impasse.

For UOSW, the rally came just a few days before their union certification voting period came to an end, confirming UO Student Workers as the official representative of over 4,000 undergraduate students working on campus. Their speakers emphasized the importance in not just voting to certify the union but also pledging solidarity with GTFF as they move toward a potential strike.

Multiple members of GTFF leadership spoke, including a member of the bargaining team, the chair for the RAGE (Research Assistant Graduate Employee) Committee, and a representative for international GEs. A UO Student Workers leader and Young Democratic Socialists of America member also spoke, expressing undergraduate solidarity for GTFF and thanking GTFF for all the help and inspiration they have provided to UO Student Workers.

“After the impasse was declared, we have entered a seven day period where the last offers are made by both sides to the Labor Relations Board. Then, we enter a 30 day cooling off period,” said Ben Benanix, a member of the GTFF bargaining team.

After the cooling off period, UO administration can impose the contract whether GTFF likes it or not, but in response, GTFF members can then vote to strike.

Undergraduate students can support GEs by signing GTFF’s Solidarity Pledge, a promise to stand with GTFF if they strike, and not cross their picket lines by taking jobs doing their work. The link is available on their social media and website and simply requires a student’s 95 number and virtual signature.

“We will continue to be visible on campus and show that we are united and are ready to walk out of work,” Benanix said.

GTFF is reaching a pivotal time in their campaigning. Whether a strike becomes necessary or not, The Insurgent, as a primarily undergraduate student publication, will continue to stand firmly in solidarity with them. UO only works because they do and they deserve a living wage.

Photos by Azzi Lescio

University of Oregon Students for Justice in Palestine: Our Statement on Current Events

UO Students for Justice in Palestine — Sun, 01 Oct 2023 00:00:00 -0700

On October 7th, Hamas forces in the Gaza Strip carried out an attack on Israeli settlements and military installations, killing over 1,400 people, most of them civilians. In response, the Israeli government has placed Gaza under a state of total siege. Supplies of water, food, fuel, medicine, and other basic necessities have ceased, throwing two million Palestinians, the vast majority of whom are civilians, into a dire humanitarian crisis. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), using American-made aircraft and artillery, are now conducting an intense and unremitting bombardment of Gaza, and are preparing for a devastating ground invasion.

Bombs have leveled entire city blocks, schools, mosques and churches. In one particularly horrifying incident, a missile or rocket obliterated a hospital and killed hundreds. Since October 7th, over 7,000 people have been killed and thousands more wounded, the vast majority of these Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and half of them children. Per the United Nations, over one million Palestinians have been internally displaced in Gaza, about half of the territory’s population.

These recent events are the brutal culmination of over 75 years of occupation, dispossession, and apartheid inflicted on the Palestinian people at the hands of the Israeli state, with the active complicity of Western powers—above all the government of the United States. Today, the actions and statements of Israel’s leaders constitute more than simply violations of the laws of war, however egregious. Rather, they are steps towards the full physical eviction or extermination of a subject people—that is, towards genocide.

UO SJP condemns without reservation all violence directed at civilian populations, whether carried out by Hamas or by the Israeli government. We also totally reject all racist ideologies that dehumanize groups of people and justify violence, including anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.

As Americans and people living in the United States, we are horrified by the escalating violence, and we demand that it be stopped at its source: by ending the occupation of Palestine and its apartheid regime. We make three specific demands:

That Oregon’s members of Congress support an immediate ceasefire and access to desperately needed** humanitarian aid** in the Gaza strip, along the lines of the “Ceasefire Now” resolution proposed by Congresswoman Cori Bush
Divestment by public institutions in Oregon, including the University of Oregon, from corporations profiting from the occupation
Support for negotiations to end the occupation and lay a foundation for a just peace in the region

International movements of students and working people have ended systems of apartheid in the past, like the movements to dismantle South African apartheid or the Jim Crow regime in the United States. UO SJP aims to walk in the footsteps of these movements for peace and civil rights, and build a powerful mass movement to educate students and force politicians to act. We welcome all members of the UO community who want to act to stop the violence and lay a foundation for a just peace between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples.

GTFF Graduate Workers to Request Mediation in Negotiations with UO

Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation — Fri, 25 Aug 2023 00:00:00 -0700

EUGENE: The bargaining team of the Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation (GTFF - AFT Local 3544) has announced plans to request state mediation following yesterday’s bargaining session with the University of Oregon. The groups have been in contract negotiations since March 2023, yet a tentative agreement between the two parties is far from being reached. GTFF’s bargaining team hopes that mediation will spur progress and move the parties toward a tentative agreement.

GTFF and UO have been holding biweekly bargaining sessions since March, but little headway has been made toward agreeing to major points on the union’s bargaining platform. The GTFF’s last contract was ratified in 2019, and rapid inflation in the years since has left graduate workers unable to meet the cost-of-living in Eugene. In addition to their demand for salary increases, the GTFF team has put forward proposals that would ensure additional resources for caregivers and international students, as well as protections against discrimination in the workplace. GTFF has also proposed an Equitable Housing Letter of Agreement to create accountability for UO’s role as a major property developer contributing to the rising cost of local housing.

The previous bargaining session on August 3rd saw an audience of over 65 graduate workers walk out in protest of the UO’s salary proposal that would leave all graduate workers well below a living wage. The counteroffer from UO’s team proposed 4 percent increases to the minimum salary and 2 percent increases to those above the minimum. Even for graduate workers completing the maximum amount of hourly work, this offer translates to a mere $76, $86, and $91 increase per pay period for respective salary tiers in year one of the contract.

“We want to move forward and make progress. Our union is bargaining in good faith with the UO, but we need to get our members’ needs met,” said co-lead negotiator Emalydia Flenory. “We hope the UO responds to the considerable movement we made on salaries today with some more realistic offers than their previous proposals.”

UO’s team held the GTFF’s salary proposal for 75 days before making their latest counteroffer at the August 3rd session, following graduate worker testimonies on the indignities they face due to low wages. As co-lead negotiator Cy Abbott explained, “there is a legal timeline we are following. Our teams lost valuable time to negotiate while the UO held onto our salary proposal.”

Despite their low wage offers, UO’s bargaining team has claimed they want to invest primarily in GE salaries, and therefore are not willing to put money into the articles on caregivers and international graduate workers. Their lack of engagement with these articles has slowed negotiations, as the GTFF has been unable to make progress in ensuring necessary resources and protections for some of their most financially burdened members.

“We haven’t been making the progress we want to see and we need the UO to take our demands seriously,” said Flenory. “We believe a state mediator will see the value in our proposals and research.”

As one of the oldest graduate employee unions in the U.S., GTFF represents over 1,400 graduate employees engaged in teaching and research work at the UO. Graduate employees perform necessary work to keep the UO functioning, teaching undergraduate students, grading their coursework, and supporting them through their programs.

Abstracting What's Natural

Brigham — Thu, 01 Jun 2023 00:00:00 -0700

Everything in the world has been defined, or in terms of my current metaphor, “boxed up.” I aim to convince the reader that these boxes should be fully opened to reveal the more accurate defining characteristic of the world, which is its abstractness and lack of definition. I am not discussing scientific or physical phenomena, such as north and south or positive and negative, but that of the human condition. We’ve placed fulfillment into a narrow economic understanding and created models of a meaningful life by means of film and television that are unattainable for most people. We are the ones who in fact created this limiting perspective and the conception that we are supposed to fit inside of it. How can we possibly allow for such abstract terms such as freedom, love, and politics to be naturalized by mass media? I assume a corresponding image came to mind when reading each of those words, and too many people take these subconscious relationships for granted.

Modern discourse possesses a uniformity in people’s conceptualization of the current reality that limits thinking to the actual and limits an attainment of the possible. We’ve created boxes in the pursuit of total rationality and our desire to define everything. We’ve restricted our own freedom by developing a common understanding of the term. A word that is in opposition to restrictions has become trapped in its current form. We’ve become slaves to definition. We are victims of the limitations we have imposed on ourselves.

Society has generated expectations around our behavior and deemed them as norms that we are pushed to model ourselves after. These norms have led to a cynical self-understanding. If we are the round peg unable to fit in the square hole, the thought that we are somehow less than is incredibly destructive. Constraining the infinite spectrum of humanity into a minute range of possibilities according to idealized physical identity, but more importantly, accepted ideologies regarding what matters in life, is a primary contributing factor as to why so many today to undergo serious depression or anxiety, and in the harshest cases, harm themselves. This negative self-perception of oneself can be paralleled by a similar perspective on what constitutes success today.

The terms worth and value are inherently attached to it is a dollar amount that defines the amount of economic freedom we possess. This monetary freedom pretty much constitutes freedom of action in capitalist society, and if one is not able to conjure enough wealth to get by, let alone do the things they actually want to do, a negative sense of identity can be found as the common result. Nothing in today’s world is simply allowed to exist without an attached limitation linguistically. I do not want to promote the idea that some of these definitions cannot be positive as well, such as the identification of basic human rights to that of autonomy, speech, and life, but these things are not universal due to the relativity of values in many non-American societies.

My main gripe with the current use of language is that of the “either / or” distinction. This artificial idea leaves no room for ambiguity and no freedom to truly act outside of pure affirmation or negation. The most blatant example of this can be found in the two-party system, which is void of any true ideological representation through party-identification objectifying the candidate into a predetermined set of views of that respective party, and in today’s climate, no room for true political discussion outside of the accepted attitudes. This “two-party system” is a ruse, and simply indoctrinates the voting population into believing they have democratic power, when in reality they are participating in the continued oppression of foreign countries, the lower classes, and any real possibility of bettering the lives of the masses in the current construction of production. Almost every choice we make in life goes beyond the distinction of black and white, but we are manipulated to think we have to choose between two distinct paths in so many instances of our lives. After highschool we are pushed to go to college or join the workforce. Once we get a job, the path of hard work is necessary or one will find themselves living a poor life. Relationships are immediately connected to marriage and monogamy, where we should prove that we will love someone forever or, on the other hand, live a miserable lonely life. Any rational person should possess an innate lack of uncertainty, the basis for anxiety and many people’s hesitancy to truly be themselves in a world so caught up in the concrete.

The most contradictory definitions are those which constitute morality. How does one define a word relating to the “right” way to behave? The obvious answer is you cannot, but in the modern day, we do so through cultural relativism under the notion of unwavering growth and progress. Morality is dependent on the existence of others, but there has and never will be an objective moral compass. Just because we have progressed to the perceived peak of human history, it does not mean that we have reached the summit of the mountain. This summit is hidden from our view because it lies in a time not yet lived. By accepting our current way of life as ideal, we inherently limit ourselves and every other individual from achieving more. We’ve also isolated our sense of freedom as individualistic, as if our freedom isn’t reliant on the freedom of others. If we were left to pure solitude, our freedom would be worthless as there would be nothing to enact our freedom on, for it would be relative to the inhuman, and would ultimately be defined by the action or lack of action taken by one individual. To truly say that humanity has reached its highest sense of value, there is a requirement that every individual is capable of enacting their freedom equally.

Many things do define our condition, and are contingent on the fact we are alive. The human condition is limited to the day we are born to the day we cease to be. The things we create or memories we’re a part of can be infinite, but these moments too will eventually never be spoken about again, as the connections to that memory itself will not exist for eternity. The only thing we can do is seek to cultivate our own existence through the things we devote our time to in light of an uncertain future. Any attempt to transcend the finite nature of our lives is futile, but the attempt to make the world a place filled with artificial truth is equally dishonest. The point I want to make regards the human desire to live in a world on his own terms, and many of the societal stigmas, norms, and expectations that we blindly accept and serve to limit this desire to be free. Living with complete freedom does not give one the right to encroach on the freedom of others, but to coexist in a world defined by coexistence. Restraining ourselves by succumbing to the “either/or” dichotomy and even to previous human history (to an extent) rejects the notion of our free-will. If you truly believe in a cause that will benefit yourself and others, or want to live your life in a certain way that goes against the grain, strive to achieve those things. We all end up in the same place, and the question is, are you going to let others manipulate you into becoming a standardized subject? Or will you break out of the box and truly live according to your aspirations? The choice is yours.

Disability, Queer Erasure and the Asian American Minority

Nephrite — Thu, 01 Jun 2023 00:00:00 -0700

Society has created, through the diminution of “Asianness”, an Asian American aesthetic that waters down all descendents from Asian countries into a monolithic mass who is constantly striving to achieve the white capitalist perfection that nobody, not even white people can ever achieve. Now the reason that I call this an “aesthetic” rather than a “stereotype” is because a stereotype is a grimly negative, untrue generalization that people actively fight against, however an aesthetic is a surface level pleasantry. While the model minority myth is the weaponized stereotype of perception by white supremacists to uphold their supremacy, the Asian American aesthetic is the goal actually strived for in the Asian American community through a neo-assimilation which allows easy digestibility to the critical social eye.

Of course this aesthetic is not actually a desirable goal, it is a concept cruelly created by the capitalist machine that incurs a complete loss of identity and community in order to function. However, in a country where the perpetual foreigner trope is explicitly persistent, although we reside upon Native American soil so it makes no sense for white to be the default, in order to survive and thrive, the Asian American will be far more inclined than most to deeply internalize capitalist perfection as the only path to success, and sacrifice their identity and soul to get there.

Therefore, because the Asian American aesthetic revolves around social and mental perfection, any deviation from it is harshly received. The Asian American existence is reduced to two tracks: appearing as the model minority with the constant looming shadow of the perpetual foreigner, or an enduring invisibility and nonexistence in the public sphere. This creates very difficult circumstances for Asian Americans who are incapable of curating the facade to effectively achieve the aesthetic, which disproportionately includes those who are physically disabled, neurodivergent, and/or queer. I will argue that this is not only due to not fitting the model minority stereotype, but due to the internal overlapping of collectivist mentality with the Asian American aesthetic.

Collectivist mentality tends to be more prevalent among Asian American families who have a closer proximity to immigration, for collectivism is a prominent mentality in the east. Although collectivism should not be mistaken to be an ideal that all Asians subscribe to, many Asian American families with immigrant matriarchs and patriarchs will experience this phenomenon. Collectivism directly clashes with American individualism, for the importance is not placed on individual achievement but the collective triumph, and in America it often manifests enclosed to the family unit. Subsequently, success is a familial affair dedicated to the pleasing of the older generations, thus if a family member fails, it is the entire family’s humiliation.

Upholding family honor is difficult enough as the Asian American aesthetic creates insurmountable pressure for conformity, however for those with disabilities it is exponentially more difficult. Both physical and cognitive disabilities contribute to the terrifying prospect of standing out, not being able to achieve traditional capitalist success, hence becoming a burden on the family. However, this is not a simply a monetary loss, it is a failure to fit the Asian American aesthetic which draws attention as a stain on the family, a perpetual humiliation, a vicious loss of face, and a public dishonor, which is one of the worst harms that can fall upon many Asian American families.

Incidentally, it is important to note that this emphasis on dramatically avoiding public dishonor is habitually orientalized by the Western lens, which I find to be rather disgusting because it comes off as a weird fetishization by Western media exploiting the entire east as an extravagant performance. Additionally, it fails to capture the ideological nuances of collectivism, nor realize that not all Asian and Middle Eastern people will experience it. And for those that do, in America it is more than just a mere continuation of their ethnic country, it is a method of survival. The Asian American presence in the United States has always been splattered with unjustly and quietly spilt blood, as people are often attacked simply for being different. For example, a recent resurgence in anti-Asian hate due to COVID has led to a 149% increase in reported anti-Asian hate crimes in 2020 (Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism). Additionally, this recent statistic disproportionately victimizes the elderly which, with the collectivist value that deeply cherishes our elders, is a massive devastation to Asian American communities, and is very painful to see. As a result, in America very strong bonds within Asian American families and communities will flourish. Among family might be the only time you can truly be yourself, practice connections to your culture (if you still have them) and speak your language (if it is not firstly english), meanwhile under the social gaze the Asian American aesthetic will be increasingly tightly maintained.

Moreover, when collective success is specifically measured within the constraints of a capitalist society, those who are disabled are doomed to hardship because capitalism actively hinders disabled people from thriving. This is achieved not only with physical barriers and accessibility issues, but with the social stigma of not being a fully individual and self-sufficient being which therefore impedes productivity. The Asian American aesthetic is only successfully upheld when a person is perceived positively as a smoothly functioning cog in the machine of capitalism, so a visible disability will render their contributions invisible as their presence is diluted to a foreign visual anomaly. The intersectionality of being disabled and Asian layers on to specifically highlight the exoticism of the foreign, and they are consequently ostracized from ever achieving the Asian American aesthetic.

Failure to traditionally succeed in school or in the workplace can have a range of mental health effects, from the individual mental strain of failing the family, to the family disappointment that will incessantly and aggressively be expressed every day, to even disownment. Furthermore, according to the APA (American Psychiatric Association), Asian Americans are the least likely race/ethnicity in the United States to seek mental health help, and the least likely to receive mental health care, so the mental pressure that plagues Asian American communities is never treated and generationally persists. Additionally, this results in a failure to diagnose many who are neurodivergent, so not only are their potential failures brutally criticized according to neurotypical standards, but they may not ever receive access to the support that is available in order to succeed. Mental health in the Asian American community does not have a support system, is deeply stigmatized, and is a symptom of family weakness and inadequacy. Many will suffer entire lifetimes in silence to preserve the untainted family name and ensure the best for the future generations.

However, one woman who is monumentally challenging the perception of disability intersecting with Asian American identity is Alice Wong, a Asian American disability activist and writer. She founded the Disability Visibility Project and wrote her powerful memoir: Year of the Tiger. Year of the Tiger wonderfully encapsulates Wong’s experiences growing up with the conflicting intersectionalities of her identities, and how she forged her way through the world to build a tangible community and to be seen for what she is and not what others visually perceive her as.

The collectivist mentality converging with the Asian American aesthetic can also have a uniquely positive effect on disabled Asian Americans, for in an environment where hatred and judgment can be found everywhere, family is the most important and many parents will pour everything into the success of their children. For example, quite a few Asian American parents will expend a lot of time and energy every night after work to personally teach their children math, science, and english concepts, commonly giving them external workbooks to enforce their learning, to ensure academic success. Although for some this can be an unpleasant or traumatic experience, for others it is the extra support that they need to succeed in school to their fullest ability. What people require to successfully meet their needs for accessibility in school varies widely, and can often not be effectively met, so for the Asian American community that often will go undiagnosed for cognitive disabilities, the external support can be very helpful.

Or another example is a personal anecdote: when I was diagnosed with Celiac, my mother promptly began to fill the cupboards and fridge with only celiac-safe breads, sauces, and ingredients, and she altered all of her dishes to be celiac friendly, becoming entirely gluten-free herself. For many Asian American families with the collectivist mentality, struggling is a family experience, as it is the family versus the entire world, so in some beautiful cases, visible and invisible disabilities will be smoothly adapted into the family rhythm and lifestyle in a very cohesive and natural way.

Another frequently overlooked intersectional group within the Asian American diaspora is queer Asian Americans. Throughout history, media and pop culture has generally induced an effeminization and desexualization of Asian men, and a hyper feminization and over sexualization of Asian women. However, I would argue that the more recent booming success of K-pop and anime has led to an increase of the fetishization of all genders of Asians. As much as I love these mediums, with their predominantly western, and peculiarly fervent, consumption, I believe that it is a chronic symptom of an international version of the Asian American aesthetic. These mediums utilize the intentional placement of Asian bodies and Asian likeness onto the market for western consumption because western obsession leads to capital success. This is another example of Asians being economized upon for western/white benefit. Additionally, they are curated for the heterosexual gaze: K-pop for white women, and anime for white men.

Many queer people are drawn to K-pop and anime, however the media aesthetic itself overwhelmingly perpetuates heterosexuality. This erases queer Asians from holding a space, for the overwhelming media that represents Asianness carries the heterosexual audience in mind, thus Asians are subconsciously deemed to be a heterosexual race. To fit with the digestible Asian American aesthetic, queerness is far less flexibly accepted into Asian American families and communities than disability has the potential to be, so queer Asian Americans are often estranged from their Asian identity. Queerness is regarded as a western phenomenon, and queer Asian Americans are accordingly seen as too western for the Asian American communities, but too foreign for the whites.

Environmental Sustainability is Self and Community Defense

Sage — Thu, 01 Jun 2023 00:00:00 -0700

Art by Rosie

The Earth wants us. She gives her love freely, her abundance, creating and sustaining our ways of life. She is the maker of our stories and the place in which our stories live on. In her loving embrace, I find my home. It is in this home that I find community, purpose, and joy. Earth is family. And I shall protect her as such.

I have come to believe that all relationships compel the behavior necessary for their maintenance. The obligation to sustainably care for Earth is merely the recognition of our nature as members of an ecological system larger than ourselves. It is the importance of this relationship with the life sustaining force that orients our perspective towards environmental preservation, not some moral obligation or a certain system of values.

Action without recognition of the conditions we find ourselves within is simply denial. Yet, we mentally and physically take ourselves away from our place in the ecology and imagine ourselves as captains of our own reality. We imagine ourselves as masters of the present rather than members of a performance of global proportions. Rather than serving to sustain our relationship with the Earth, our behaviors serve to build a world we imagine ourselves master of. This discord denies the opportunity available for harmony between the human and natural worlds, the recognition that these worlds are one and the same. The screams of the earth fall upon deaf ears while we consume her. To sustain ourselves, we eat the flesh of our children, our overconsumption depleting the gifts of the earth and destroying the life force of future generations. We raze the sources of their physical and spiritual health while imagining we are sustaining them. Without mindfulness, our actions poison those whom we hope to save.

On a cold mountain top, a lone flower blooms. To recognize the mountain in the flower and the flower in the mountain is to recognize interbeing. The flower exists only in relation to the mountain and to the rest of the present moment. The conditions which created the flower also created the mountain. To sit with this is to accept the mountain and the flower are one and the same, and so too are you the mountain and the flower. You are the present, in its entirety. The perceiver, and the perceived. To create division between the self and the other is to miss the conditions from which these emerge, the Earth as the prior condition. Killing the flower is to kill the mountain and yourself. So too is killing the forest is not only an affront to the life force of the forest. To kill the forest is to stab a knife through your own chest and the chest of your child, of all present and future generations. Environmental sustainability is self and community defense. Earth is self. Earth is family. And I shall protect her as such.

How to Blow Up A Pipeline (2022) Film Review

David Patrick Schranck Jr. — Thu, 01 Jun 2023 00:00:00 -0700

In 2021, Andreas Malm, a Swedish associate professor of human ecology at Lund University and activist, released a controversial and incendiary book called How to Blow Up a Pipeline. The non-fiction book from the leftist publishing house Verso Books argues that climate activists should engage in property destruction of critical fossil fuel infrastructure due to the ineffectiveness of the largely non-violent movement to stop climate change. What could have easily been just another theory book that was little known outside the Left instead unexpecedely crossed over into more mainstream attention, even garnering reviews from the likes of neoliberal techocrat New York Times opinion columnist Ezra Klein. Now, just two years later, a fictional film adaptation of the book has already been produced, made its rounds on the festival circuit, and is now in a wide theatrical release.

The film, directed by Daniel Goldhaber and co-written by him along with Ariela Barer (who also stars) and Jordan Sjol, follows a small group of disaffected activists from different parts of the country who come together in rural West Texas with the goal of strategically blowing up a pipeline in an attempt to force more substantive and meaningful action to combat the climate crisis. The ensemble cast also includes Lukas Gage (The White Lotus), Marcus Schribner (Black-ish), Kristine Froseth, Forrest Goodluck, Sasha Lane, Jake Weary, and Irene Bedard. The plot is cleverly structured as a heist thriller that consistently keeps up the tension and quickly reels you in. By employing this tried and true genre to capture the audience’s intrigue, the story is elevated above being simply ideological and engages us on an emotional level that is quite compelling. I was fully invested in these characters and their mission not just because I found them to be righteous intellectually, but because I was very much able to see myself in these characters and their struggles. This is where the power of How to Blow Up a Pipeline lies.

Goldhaber, when asked by Malcolm Harris of the publication Jewish Currents what his film’s goal is, stated, “It asks the question: What kinds of tactics are defensible in fighting climate change? One source of climate doomism is the sense that this is such a big problem that it feels impossible to even start tackling it. That’s paralyzing. We’re telling a story about eight people who believe the answer is the destruction of fossil fuel infrastructure; they see this as an act of self-defense. The film asks the audience to empathize with them and, by extension, to consider that argument.” What Daniel Goldhaber and his collaborators seeks to achieve with How to Blow Up a Pipeline is nothing short of radical within the context of mainstream American filmmaking. Fictional films in American cinema with a wide release that directly and passionately sympathize with unabashedly radical activism are almost unheard of. The closest example of something similar emerging in recent times is Judas and the Black Messiah (2021), which was given a fairly low-key streaming release by Warner Bros. during the COVID-19 pandemic and ended up winning two out of six total Oscar nominations. However, that film was placed firmly within a historical context and the focus was more on the informant protagonist’s perspective than that of Fred Hampton and the other Black Panthers. How to Blow Up a Pipeline puts us in the midst of this activist milieu in the current era from start to finish with little focus given to their opposition. For this fact alone, the film should be commended.

However, How to Blow Up a Pipeline does have its weaknesses too. When I went to see this film, I went with a group of friends and comrades from UO Young Democratic Socialists. Afterwards, when we discussed our thoughts on the film, one of the main flaws that stuck out to us was the characters’ lack of adherence to the norms of security culture. At multiple points, the characters were far too loose-lipped and sloppily insecure in their organizing of the action. One point that particularly stuck out was when in a public meeting in a library Xochitl (Ariela Barer) expressed her frustrations with the limits of her group’s organizing to get their college to divest from fossil fuels and openly called for destruction of fossil fuel infrastructure. Another is when Michael (Goodluck) posts videos of himself giving instructions on how to construct bombs on TikTok prior to his involvement in the action. An additional critique that I heard from an Insurgent comrade that stuck with me was that the only people who were caught and incarcerated were people of color and all the white characters weren’t, which while making sense within the context of the plot still seemed to be an odd choice for this type of story.

How to Blow Up a Pipeline is a film that certainly wears its influences on its sleeves. Goldhaber and Barer listed Ocean’s Eleven, Reservoir Dogs, The Battle of Algiers, and the Eugene-set documentary If a Tree Falls as inspirations. The filmmakers deftly wove together elements of these and other films to create something unique, fresh, distinctive, original, and thought provoking. Is it a perfect film? No. However, this film will not only help push forward the necessary dialouge to be had about how best to respond to the dire state of the climate crisis in the face of institutional indifference and pandering, woefully insufficient “compromises.” The existence of a film adaptation of How to Blow Up a Pipeline will of course not change much on its own. But, it marks a major shift in American media and will surely inspire activists today and for generations to come. By forcing average, less political audiences to consider what the activists on screen say and do and also allowing people who see themselves in these characters to feel validated in this portrayal, How to Blow Up a Pipeline is powerful! If the FBI finds a film’s mere existence to be dangerous and noteworthy and National Review describes it as “a bizarre, cold-blooded illustration of why we no longer trust our media”, then surely they must be doing something right! I give How to Blow Up a Pipeline a rating of four out of five stars and recommend checking it out! The film is currently¹ screening at the Broadway Metro theater in downtown Eugene.

Technomancer’s Note: The film is no longer screening at the Broadway Metro Theater as of July 7th, 2023 ↩︎

Some Healing Lessons and Reflections I've Learned From Dr. Ana-Maurine Lara

Xochitl — Thu, 01 Jun 2023 00:00:00 -0700

An energetic moment in time where water and other cosmic elements occupy a human form. Our relationship to this world and consciousness is tied intimately with the thousands of other energies working around, throughout, within time and us. There is woven density, multiplicity, multiple dimensions to being that make up how we exist; internal realms to dive into and pull from. The energies around us are always working to converge - create, imagining new futures and reenacting sacred spirals. Being in community necessitates us to foster vulnerability, love, and joy. Alters are a place we can come to in ritual, in community, in communication with spirit—to be healed. The altar-punto is our connection across worlds, life-times, and ancestors. The situation of living under neocolonial social and economic rules has bound our ever changing selves within oppressive confines, such as gender, which were never meant to hold, uplift, or define us but continue to be imposed as a means to bury our love, potential, and freedom. There is the chance for us to heal each other.

Our body-lands are sources of and windows through which power moves. Power is not individual. Individuals operate and move within a variety of collective structures which define, limit, and enable power, identity, and agency. Our agency is manifested with and through each other. We can gain agency, identity, and power through community building, knowledge gathering, and radical honesty/trust/love.

Place-making encompasses our ability to be honest with and honor our selves. The self, how we see and know and think and take care of or mistreat our being, intimately knows how we relate to and interact with all other earth beings, those who hold us and those who oppress us. To hold and embody our truest selves is to make space to see and honor others’ truths. Navigating both body-lands and place-making is a habitual and intentional orienting. That is to say we must commit to the practice of seeing, listening, understanding, and communicating with ourselves, other earth beings, and the invisible cosmic forces (“dark matter”) that literally hold our solar system and universe together.

The emphasis of decolonial feminist values necessarily centers the importance of our relationships with our kin. We are of the earth, the land, our plant and animal relatives. To liberate ourselves we must rely on our connections – our ability for interdependence. Our love for ourselves/this world can be nurtured in all we are and do. We must turn to our knowledge keepers, our healers, our visionaries, our artists and learn from each other constantly to grieve, imagine, and create free futures.

The Altar-punto is the spiritual and physical manifestation of a space that translates our being and our relationships with the world/ourselves/others/ancestors/decoloniality. As we navigate this world we become/deconstruct/create. As we navigate this world we inventory methods of survival. For Brown/Black : Queer people we are constantly intaking information, sharpening our senses, noticing how the colonial world perceives us and evolving our response. As we begin to honor our body-lands as Altars-puntos our power, divinity, agency, and truths become more visible to ourselves and others; our ability to transverse across and between multiple truths, identities, boundaries, realms, etc. is widened.

The Earth Playlist

The Student Insurgent — Thu, 01 Jun 2023 00:00:00 -0700

Listen on Spotify

Where Do the Children Play? -– Cat Stevens

Selva negra — Maná

Maggot Brain — Funkadelic

Cuñaq — Curawaka

La rueda que mueve al mundo — Los Espíritus

Por el suelo — Manu Chao

Apocalíptico — Residente

Madre Tierra — Macaco

Semillas — Muerdo

Madre selva — Grupo Putumayo

El Condor Pasa — Simon & Garfunkel

Raindrops — Elephant Revival

This Land Is Your Land — Woody Guthrie

No soy de aquí, ni soy de allá — Jorge Cafrune

Esta tierra no está sola — Ediel Vasquez

Tierra Querida — Natalia Lafourcade

Sunshine on My Shoulders — John Denver

Cuatro vientos -–Danit

It’s oh so quiet — Bjork

Teardrop — massive attack

ILY — Neo10y

Someone Shot the Koch brothers — Foraging and the Rattling Bones

Solid Liquid Gas — Eartheater

Shovel Moonlight — Viktor Taiwo

Jan Lundgren Trio — Garden of delight

Strange Fruit — Billie Holiday

Lilac Wine — Nina Simone

Four Ethers — serpentwithfeet

Atmosphere — Joy Division

Nature Boy — Nat King Cole

Symphony for a Spider Plant — Plantasia

Peace on Earth (Live) — John Coltrane

Pink + White — Frank Ocean

Empire Ants — Gorillaz

Elements — Lindsey Stirling

The Internet Is Like Eating Plastic — Raveena

My Dog’s Eyes — Zammuto

Sun & Moon — Dimond Saints

Dark Gaia — Nostalgia

Matriarx — REBELWISE, Mama C

Earthbound—Mic Crenshaw

Free Em All—Mic Crenshaw, David Rovics (ft. Opium Sabbah)

Defect — Snõõper

Rainforest — Noname

Planet B—King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard

Agua Parada — Helena Meirelles

Phoenix Rising — Maria Upton

We Have Heaven — Yes

Cleaving Giants of Ice — Revocation

Flying Whales — Gojira

又见茉莉花 (yòu jiàn mò li huā) — 末裔乐队 (mò yì yuè duì)

Wangchuan River — Black Kirin

飘雪 (piu1 syut3) — Priscilla Chan

The Four Seasons — Antonio Vivaldi

Forest Fairy Waltz — Denys Rybkin

The Sunlit Garden (from Revolutionary Girl Utena) — played by Daniela Pinto

The Flower Garden (from Howl’s Moving Castle) — Joe Hisaishi

Don’t Go Near the Water — The Beach Boys

To the Last Whale — Crosby & Nash

Skies of L.A. — Celine Dion

Feels Like Summer — Childish Gambino

What a Wonderful World — Louis Armstrong

Mercy, Mercy Me — Marvin Gaye

(Nothing But) Flowers — Talking Heads

The Historical Attitudes Towards Nature and Their Consequences

Adrian A. — Thu, 01 Jun 2023 00:00:00 -0700

Art by Rosie

NATURE, as a concept, is near impossible to define. The word itself evokes multiple meanings that are dependent on your cultural background, your place of origin, your religious beliefs - but now, more than ever, “nature” is being defined as a finite place of resources or a commodity that you can choose to participate in or not. When questioning and examining where the prevailing beliefs about nature and its value come from in the Western World, it is absolutely critical to look at the historical context that predates our current mess of rising temperatures and oil spills and examine the cultural attitudes and mindsets that European settlers brought into the Americas— mindsets that are still prevalent today.

European settler-colonialists approached the New World with the expectation that it was a land abundant with resources just begging to be harvested. This idea that the Americas were just a swathe of wild untamed wilderness prevails today as a popular environmentalist myth that serves no purpose but to undermine indigenous people and frame the rapid consumption of resources by settlers as a short-sighted and even foolish act instead of one done with intention. Indigenous groups had terraformed the land, impacted ecosystems, and made use of the natural resources around them for thousands of years before contact with settlers, and they did so in line with their cultural and religious belief systems that viewed all inhabitants of the land, human or animal, as rightful occupants of the space and the natural world as one that is alive, omnipotent, and must be respected.

In contrast, settlers from the West brought their belief in a natural Hierarchy of Beings (scala naturae) with God at the top, humans below, and every other thing in the world following after in a chain. This philosophy, combined with cultural Christianity, allowed European settlers to frame the natural world as something that must _provide _to mankind—it must be conquered to make it yield its gifts. The American wilderness was foreign and teeming with uncertainty to the first homesteaders.The hardships they faced shaped their view that the natural world was violent, unpredictable, and actively hostile—therefore, successful domination would surely be rewarded greatly. This is where the concept of the Protestant Work Ethic begins to thrive; hard work and extreme hardships would be seen by God and rewarded in turn.

This was not confined to the early colonial period. After the revolution, as the new United States of America began to form its economy, harnessing the natural world became even more of a struggle. Massive cash crops like cotton were notoriously difficult to cultivate, so plantation owners would use any means possible to circumvent nature and its cycles as long as it meant the most profit. Cattle were brought into the Americas, out of their element, and settlers were determined to do anything possible to flatten out the natural landscape and turn it into the perfect grounds for grazing. Rivers were diverted from their natural course and canals were built —often disrupting the fishing practices of many indigenous peoples in order to supply power to the many mills and factories that were beginning to appear, as well as provide transportation for the new wealth of exports that the United States were producing. As the Industrial Era began, work schedules transformed from sun-up to sun-down into by-the-hour. This is just a brief overview of the changes that Settlers forced upon the environment, not even touching on the atrocities committed against indigenous people and enslaved Africans in pursuit of profiting off of the New World; many of the acts committed by settlers often had the secondary goal of permanently disrupting or destroying indigenous lifestyles and hunting practices.

Our current reality in the United States is actively being shaped and influenced by the actions of settler-colonialists and these attitudes prevail to this day. However, instead of appearing as the identifiable and condemnable “manifest destiny,” today they appear under trending tags and easily digestible Tik Toks. The pastoralist fantasy conjured up in homesteading, cottagecore, desiring a “crunchy” or all-natural lifestyle etc. is simply just a modern dressed-up version of the exact same fantasy that incoming settlers had—kicking the rightful inhabitants off of the land and turning it into a blank slate in order to live out an idyllic European lifestyle free from the “society” that was too _corrupt _for them. Our late-stage capitalism and its egregious consumption of the land was created by this fantasy. Unclaimed or “wild” land in the United States is empty for a reason; indigenous people were forcefully removed from their ancestral lands in order for white settlers to place their idyllic cottages and log cabins and plantations.

Slave labor was then utilized for all of the tedious and backbreaking labor involved in living off of the land. Western expansion wasn’t just about land, either: Western values came with it as well. Many modern-day “homesteaders” and “crunchy” moms are white women who do not work, take care of the kids, and tend to the garden. These individuals are often benefactors of a social position that allows them a wealth of time and space not accessible to all, happily rejecting the supposed plagues of “modern society,” in favor of co-opting feminist language to promote a lifestyle where women are homemakers and mothers. This advocacy for “going back to nature” is a disturbing callback to a time where women were subjugated and expected to be submissive, docile, and produce children for the betterment of a man and his fantasies.

Now, my intent with pulling parallels between current day trends and colonialist history is not to say that everyone who ever curated a #cottagecore Pinterest board had the exact same morals and intentions as James K. Polk and James Monroe when they fought to annex more Western territory. However, it is important to be mindful of the reality of living within the United States.Our society is entrenched in the values of Christianity, the Protestant Work Ethic, and capitalism. As we live our day to day lives within these structures, it is near impossible to avoid developing an unconscious bias that accepts these attitudes and behaviors as innocuous and disconnected from this history—especially when you benefit from these systems being in place. A large number of homestead lifestyle influencers online are white families that come from wealth;this is not a coincidence.

Having a desire to live in the forest, leave pies on the windowsill of a small cottage, or have your own garden/farm does not make you a bad person. However, it is important to examine the history of your connection to the land and the benefits you receive from these systems to understand where these ideas and conceptualizations may potentially come from. Then, consider whether or not they contribute to ongoing colonialism and white supremacist ideals and whether or not you could be inadvertently helping with that contribution. You should also avoid purposefully denying the modern day manifestations and results of history. When choosing to participate in these trends, it is necessary to be able to contend with criticism and the historical reality, and to understand how historical attitudes can shift and evolve to fit in with “modern” values.

The environmental and industrial history of the United States lays bare the exact blueprints that led us to where we are today—there is no getting out of this unless we destroy the attitudes that brought us here and contend with the modern manifestations of violent settler-colonialism and white supremacy.

What Actually is the Model Minority?

Nephrite — Thu, 01 Jun 2023 00:00:00 -0700

The Asian model minority is a phrase that most are familiar with, however few have a grasp on the severity of the concept. When we initially consider the “Asian model minority” we think of the pale Korean businessman or Chinese doctor. These could initially appear to be an unassuming, almost flattering assumption, a kudos to Asian success. However this narrative is not just vaguely annoying; its shadow looms far past people assuming that Asians are good at math.

Firstly, and this cannot be stressed enough: not all Asians are pale. We tend to socially categorize the eastern countries, such as China or South Korea as pale, then south and southeastern countries such as India, the Philippines, or Myanmar as brown, however in every one of the aforementioned countries there are people with many shades of complexion. This may seem like an obvious statement, however it is a statement that must continuously be acknowledged for the erasure of brown Asians from the narrative has persisted for generations with only a recent widespread recognition of the entrench colorism. This is not completely instituted by white americans; it is also embedded in the colorism that flows through Asian communities, notably surfacing in the 1960s-70s Yellow Power movement that ignored brown Asian Americans. However white supremacy and the model minority give this sentiment an incredibly fertile environment to grow.

The importance of recognizing the diversity of Asia extends past just remembering that countries other than Japan, South Korea, and China exist. Not only should we cease to consider “Asian” a monolithic, often Eastern Asian identity, as there are over 50 countries in Asia, each with different languages, cultures, cuisines, etc., but also that the countries themselves should not be mistaken to be homogenous. Although there is a universal national identity, there is also diversity in both ethnocultural and political identities, and approaching Asian countries with a lens of cultural essentialism is regressive and reductionist. There are frequent inferences of this in news and media, such as the homogenous mass of Chinese citizens who are simultaneously brainwashed by their government but also a barbaric hivemind; or essentially all Southeast Asian countries portrayed as beachy, underdeveloped lands rife with violence (ex. Myanmar), poverty (ex. Vietnam), or conservative religion (ex. Malaysia), which results in the assumption of a simple minded and therefore helplessly oppressed people. These implications thoroughly ignore the social nuances of the actual people in those countries.

Secondly, the assumption that Asian Americans’ prevalence in high paying white collar jobs effectively eliminates the existence of anti-Asian discrimination is misplaced. In those high paying jobs themselves, according to national EEOC (U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) workforce data, Asian Americans are the least likely group to be promoted to management positions across all industries, from tech and business to law and government. On top of that, while Asians are overrepresented in high paying jobs, they are also overrepresented in low paying jobs, and out of every racial group, Asians have the most rapidly growing income inequality.

Therefore here is my personal definition of the model minority: the act of squashing the vast diaspora of Asian Americans into a very rigid orientalist archetype, specifically a conglomeration of cultures shoved into the body of an East Asian stereotype whose merit is measured in proximity to whiteness.

However this is nearly impossible to achieve, for as a default, the Asian American is always associated in relevance to their ethnic country of origin, regardless of the level of connection that they have to it. Even here in Eugene, a relatively liberal area, people will react in impressed astonishment to an Asian person having perfect English, or be considerably surprised if English is their first or only language. And although most will not react with dramatic disgust at the presence of chicken feet or dried squid in the Asian-Mart, it is still regarded as a spectacle of the foreign, and a reminder that Asian people are exotic. The problem that arises out of this is that white people can tour and select what they like from various Asian cultures and adopt it into their lives; Buddhism, speaking Mandarin, wearing traditional attire, lumpia, anime, incense (though this is also traditionally relevant in various Native American and African cultures), etc., are all socially acceptable, even encouraged, for white people to partake in, often adding to their status of sophistication and “worldly knowledge.” However, if an Asian person does or indulges in those same things, they become too Asian, and eventually can become an unrelatable walking exhibition of the entirety of Asia, swallowed into the monolithic concept of “Asianness.”

This is a vulnerable position to be in because one is either, what researchers call, the “perpetual foreigner,” or publicly emancipated from cultural identity. The line to walk is very thin. Thus there is an unspoken expectation, especially in school or the workplace, for a rejection of cultural connection and a resulting overcompensation through social adaptation and almost a neo-assimilation: the intentional choice to blend in through hyper-professionalism and flexibility; academic excellence; suppression of true emotion; logistical competency; and submission to western norms and practices. The model minority is not the behavior of a model Asian person, it is the behavior of the most perfect white person through the capitalist lens, and thus can sometimes result in a collection of capital, and traditional success.

Consequently, the model minority myth reinforces the false idea that success in America is achievable with just hard work, while ignoring systemic barriers and discrimination that affects racial minorities. This ability for some Asian Americans to abandon identity and spirit to emulate whiteness and reach high levels of success is weaponized by white supremacy to subdivide and categorize minorities, with the proof that racism does not debilitatingly exist. The model minority myth builds walls between Asian Americans and other racial minorities; it sinisterly taunts each group’s individual attempts to gain recognition and end discrimination by invalidating this discrimination’s very existence. Employing abominable generalizations, white supremacy places pale Asian Americans and Black and Brown Americans as antithesis of one another, while brown Asian Americans face the worst of both worlds. More recently there has been a growth in solidarity, which is very beautiful to see after the long history of disjunction. It is important to recognize that the model minority myth is a tool used by white supremacy to maintain power and control over all racial minorities, which actively prevents a united revolution, so dismantling it is necessary for true equity and justice to be achieved.

The model minority myth also builds walls within oneself, alienating the Asian American from their own self and identity. The model minority myth has historically (and presently) enabled Asian American survival and even flourishing in the form of select monetary success, however this is with the pervasive condition of the rejection of community and culture, a fervent dedication to loss of identity, and being the sidekick to the symbolic cishet white man.

Within many Asian American families there is the universal life advice to kowtow to the needs and standards of the empowered, silently suffer, and always preserve dignity and save face no matter what, or a very similar message. And it fucking sucks. The dedication that the Asian American community has developed due to the model minority myth to achieve the same status as the white man has devastating consequences for the people within it.

We are expected to pretend to be a blank white slate for white supremacy to write on and hold up as a twisted lie that discrimination can be overcome with hard work and dedication. We sacrifice everything meaningful for personal survival, just to be used as a tool to uphold racism. So when we have externally expressed passionate interests and dreams, can’t hide our emotions, or simply take up more space than the bare minimum, we are no longer useful to use as a cog in the white supremacist machine and are rejected into obscurity. The model minority stereotype is elusively persistent and deeply damaging, and it aids white supremacy to prevail, thus it is crucial to dismantle and eliminate its permeation in America.

Contradictory Commitments Redux: What Does Intercultural Allyship Look Like?

Serbal Vidrio — Mon, 01 May 2023 00:00:00 -0700

Last October, I wrote an article for The Student Insurgent based on my experience conducting research with an Indigenous community in rural Colombia last summer. That article uses the example of my personal experience as a queer anthropologist who had to hide my bisexual orientation from my research collaborators so as not to jeopardize my relationship with the community—which observes Catholic norms of gender and sexuality—as a departure point for a discussion of the nuances and tensions of solidarity and allyship in cases where culture and ethical values differ. The conclusion I come to in that piece is that often, when we are able, we should put aside personal disagreements to meet people where they’re at and provide support in the ways we can for the sake of solidarity, even with people who we might not otherwise agree with. I stand by this argument, but in this article, I would like to expand the terms of the discussion. Here, I return to that discussion asking some of the same questions, though now with reference to my current experience as a research intern in Senegal, a West African country in which similar intercultural tensions between ethical values and allyship are, once more, on clear display.

As I write this, I am interning with a Senegalese NGO that works on issues of youth development, public health, and sexual education in the schools of rural Senegal. This NGO does important work in the fight against HIV/AIDS, child marriage, female genital mutilation, teenage pregnancy, gendered violence, and other problems common in Senegal, as elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa. Presumably, we would all agree that these are problematic issues that ought to be opposed. Unfortunately, that’s what my Senegalese colleagues would say about LGBTQ+ rights too. They say that being gay or transgender isn’t a part of Senegalese culture, that it’s something brought by TikTok and Western cultural imperialists. Feminism, too, is a Western imposition, because Islam teaches that men are the head of the house. Clearly, I don’t agree—and this is where the questions arise. How far can culture be taken as a defense of questionable ethics? What happens when political solidarity and personal ethics seem to be at odds? Crucially, what is the role of the bystander or potential ally in these situations of contradictory commitments?

As an anthropologist, the principle of cultural relativism—the notion that different cultures should not be judged or condemned according to the values of one’s own culture, but rather understood on their own terms—is a pillar of the professional ethics of my discipline. My training tells me that it is not my place to judge, only to attempt to understand. In general, I agree with this outlook. Cultural relativism is an important tool meant to help avoid the pitfalls of ethnocentrism, Othering, and essentialism which both anthropology and popular culture are vulnerable to. The cultural relativist perspective is especially important when engaging with peoples and cultures who have historically faced oppression and marginalization at the hands of politically dominant groups. This is, of course, the case with my Indigenous and African collaborators in Colombia and Senegal, respectively, who have suffered colonialism, racism, and other forms of exclusion.

My politics, on the other hand, tell me that sometimes it is necessary to judge, to take ethical stands against beliefs or practices that I believe are wrong. Now, usually I am willing and able to distinguish between these categories—professional ethics on the one hand, personal ethics on the other. Sometimes, however, the personal is political. I’m lucky enough to be straight passing; I don’t have to worry about my safety as a queer person in Colombia or Senegal, as long as I don’t tell people I’m queer. I’m comfortable enough keeping it that way, and that’s a privilege. Clearly, some people don’t have that privilege, and for them it may be best not to expose themselves to danger in the same context. But let’s assume that you, like me, are capable of putting your personal identity aside to engage with people and cultures who think differently. Just how far can those engagements be taken? Remember that in Senegal, it’s illegal to be gay. Men can have multiple wives, but it’s illegal for women to take multiple husbands. Female genital mutilation remains widespread among certain ethnic groups in the country, despite decades of opposition by both Western NGOs and Senegalese organizations. I assume the reader will agree that these are bad things. But at what point do we allow them to prevent us from standing with the people who justify them when it comes to questions of oppression or shared interests?

An anecdote will serve to illustrate my point. Recently I attended a meeting at the headquarters of the NGO I work with in Senegal. A group of visiting students came to learn about my organization’s sexual health pedagogy. An open and frank discussion was had and the students were attentive and mature. I was glad to be able to sit in and observe what is clearly an important area of work within a country that generally remains highly socially conservative as far as sexuality is concerned. However, it soon became clear that there is a fundamental difference in how my Senegalese colleagues and I approach questions of sexual health. For me, it’s a matter of responsible and enjoyable sexual exploration. For them, it’s strictly a matter of abstinence. My colleagues may do a lot of good work in terms of frank education and awareness around traditionally taboo subjects in Senegal—but ultimately this country remains 95% Muslim and the bottom line is that sex must wait until marriage.

At some point during the meeting, the subject turned to the nefarious influence of the internet and apps like TikTok as vectors of sexuality among Senegalese youth. Personally, this is not an issue that I think is particularly important. The meeting coordinator, however, posited that TikTok and other apps are threatening to sexually pervert Senegalese youth by introducing them to such dangerous foreign concepts as the existence of gay and transgender people. Not only are teens being encouraged to express and explore their sexuality by online content, but also dangerous foreign ideas like queerness threaten to undermine Senegalese family values. Think of the children! This discourse was met with unanimous nods around the room, both from the visiting students and the NGO activists. I stayed silent. I don’t think Senegal is ready for that conversation—and who am I to try to initiate it?

The truth is that, for cultural and religious reasons, practices like female genital mutilation and the criminalization of LGBTQ+ people’s lives will probably remain commonplace in Senegal for a long time, as other practices we may take issue with will remain prevalent in other parts of the world—and probably in our own society too. Are gun violence, racism, or transphobia in the US going anywhere anytime soon? These beliefs and practices are not so easily undone by well-meaning outsiders—nor is it their place to try. Cultural change must come from within.

This is not a call for complacency or apathy in the face of oppressive behaviors on the part of those whom, when it comes to their own oppression, we ought to stand with as allies. It is a call for a level of nuance that I think is unfortunately often lacking on the left, where people who style themselves as activists can be quick to jump to black-and-white judgements that leave little room for the gray areas of life and politics. Compartmentalization is something we should all strive to be better at. Recognizing that different people, let alone different cultures, will always have different and sometimes contradictory values is a basic life skill. I know it’s easy to stay mad at everything and everyone for not sharing your ethical system, which is obviously the best and most logical one out there. Unfortunately, everyone else has the same thought too. When it becomes clear that the whole world will never be in agreement about a great many things, we can at least decide when it is right to stand up as allies—and when sometimes it’s necessary to take a step back.

Forest Defense

Jessica Ludwig — Mon, 01 May 2023 00:00:00 -0700

My name is Jessica Ludwig and I am a volunteer with Cascadia Wildlands, a biology student at the University of Oregon, an avid hiker and outdoorsman, and a forest defense organizer with Climate Justice League. I am also an employee of Nature’s Harvest, a small-scale family forestry business in the Midwest. While I’m not from Oregon, I come from a logging town in northern Wisconsin. My family shows photos of old White Pine that used to grow abundantly throughout the forests surrounding my community. Unfortunately they were mostly logged a few generations before I was born. I see those pictures and I feel at a loss knowing I will never grow up underneath those ancient trees. When I moved out to Oregon I was under the impression that this state was different; that the old growth Douglas Firs were loved by all and were protected. It seems everywhere I look I can’t escape the reality that the old growth and mature forests are disappearing.

The 42 Divide Stand Management Plan located within the South River Field Office, Roseburg Bureau of Land Management District was one of the first forests I visited when I moved here two years ago. I had the opportunity to visit many of the units and developed a connection to the land that’s unique to any I’ve had before. It’s where I found my first chanterelle mushrooms, where I camped out with my newly formed college friends, where I found my passion for field work and love of the Pacific Northwest. Less and less of the forests here are untouched by man. I can’t help but to think of future generations and if the tree I put my arms around will still be standing and growing when I am old. These forests are resilient to many environmental threats like wildfires and they have survived lifetimes before us- let us not be the ones to end their hundreds year old reign. The future depends on the actions we do right now, and the Bureau of Land Management must see that the carbon sequestration of Oregon’s forests is essential to the survival of humanity…

Visit www.cascwild.org for more information about timber sales like 42 Divide, and find opportunities to help protect our old growth and mature forests.

In early May, two northern spotted owls that had been released into a British Columbia forest last year were found dead, potentially reducing the known wild population in the province to a single female. In other words, noethern spotted owls are functionally extinct in the wild in BC.

Senegal in Democratic Backslide: A Local Expression of a Global Pattern

Serbal Vidrio — Mon, 01 May 2023 00:00:00 -0700

Dakar, Senegal

In West Africa, a region known for political instability, military coups, and autocratic regimes, Senegal is unique for having maintained an unbroken and relatively peaceful democratic tradition since its independence from France in 1960. Jutting out of the West African coast in the semi-arid Sahel region between the Sahara to the north and the equatorial tropics to the south, Senegal is a rare success story of orderly political succession in this beleaguered region of the world.

Right now, however, Senegal finds its democratic tradition under siege. The culprit? The current president, Macky Sall, who has reigned since 2012 and who, the Senegalese people fear, may be setting himself up for an unconstitutional third term. His main challenger, political outsider Ousmane Sonko, who leads opinion polls as the most popular politician in the country, is currently facing politically motivated legal charges that threaten to invalidate his candidature in the upcoming 2024 elections. Because Sonko leads the polls, Macky Sall and his government have been doing everything possible to keep Sonko from running in 2024. Why? In a word, corruption. Sonko’s anti-corruption platform threatens the existing political order in Senegal, which is dominated by charismatic, old-school politicians and the illicit movement of embezzled state cash among themselves for personal enrichment. Macky Sall and his government know that if Sonko is elected, as he certainly would be if allowed to run, they might have to answer for their crimes. Surely thanks to the clandestine efforts of the Senegalese state to prevent that scenario at all costs, Sonko has faced assassination attempts and other extreme measures in addition to the trumped-up charges of defamation and rape which he is currently facing in court.

What is happening in Senegal is representative of a global problem—democratic backsliding that arises in reaction to popular movements which threaten the stranglehold of traditional elites on state power and finances. Senegal under Macky Sall is today in the same boat as Brazil under Bolsonaro, the US under Trump, Turkey under Erdogan, Russia under Putin, China under Xi, Hungary under Orbán, etc. The type of autocratization represented by these figures has been on the rise for the past several years, and some of the politicians listed above have succeeded in making themselves effective dictators of their respective states. What is responsible for this shift? Basic self-interest and greed, of course, are major factors. If you want to take power and hold on to it, it behooves you to surround yourself with kowtowing lackeys to whom you can keep the money flowing. It doesn’t matter if they’re good at their jobs. It doesn’t matter if the money they’re supposed to be spending on matters of state goes into their pockets instead. It only matters that they’re loyal. And if they’re well enough paid, their loyalty is guaranteed.

Of course, this kind of politicking has grave consequences. Not only does it allow strongman maniacs like Putin to launch invasions without his underlings ever daring to voice opposition (and if they do, it’s life in prison—or having your underwear poisoned by the FSB, as the case may be). It also perpetuates in some obvious ways the very problems that get people like Ousmane Sonko to finally speak up against corrupt leaders like Macky Sall. Let’s dig a little deeper into the case of Senegal.

Senegal, despite being a regional model of relative democratic stability, remains a poor country with few good opportunities for education or employment for the majority of its young population. It is, therefore, one of the major departure points in West Africa for the thousands of clandestine migrants who make the desperate and dangerous journey to Europe by fishing boat every year. It is not uncommon for several hundred young Senegalese men, women, and children to be packed like sardines into the wooden pirogues that, if they’re lucky, will see them to the coasts of countries like Spain, Portugal, or Morocco a week or two after departing from Dakar. If they’re unlucky, as many are, the boats will capsize at sea. Most don’t know how to swim, and don’t stand much of a chance of survival even if they do. Of course, getting to the shores of Europe is no guarantee of wealth and freedom; most clandestine migrants are soon caught and deported, even if they’re lucky enough to survive the journey there. This became so grave that in 2021, the governments of Spain and Senegal jointly agreed to work bilaterally towards improving migration control. Tellingly, the emphasis was on military and police cooperation more than on addressing the root economic causes of the migration in the first place. This is where the problem of corruption comes in.

Ousmane Sonko is currently facing defamation charges raised by the Minister of Tourism, Mame Mbaye Niang. Sonko accused Niang of embezzling 29 billion CFA francs (that’s over $48 million USD) from a public fund dedicated to developing agriculture in Senegal, one of the country’s most significant economic domains. Since many of the desperate young people boading the deadly boats to Europe come from agricultural parts of the country, using those funds as intended, to improve economic opportunities in agricultural areas, would likely go a long way towards addressing the root causes of the migration crisis. The fact that those vital funds were stolen by a corrupt minister who is now engaged in a coverup, as his allies in the government move to condemn the only man calling out such a flagrant abuse of power (Sonko), attests to the interconnected nature of these issues.

This, too, is a local expression of a global pattern. Think of the legacy of corruption left by Trump and his allies, or Jair Bolsonaro’s economic ties to the cattlemen destroying the Amazon, or Putin’s network of oligarch allies. Everywhere in the world that these people get into power, the corruption that surrounds them does immense harm to people and environment alike in their own countries and beyond. It is up to the people who they hurt to stand up and tell them, in the words of one Sonko supporter here in Senegal, that if they don’t step down, c’est la guerre—it’s war.

“El páramo es vida”: Lessons from the Kamëntsá Land Struggle

Serbal Vidrio — Sat, 01 Apr 2023 00:00:00 -0700

It was past midnight and a gentle rain pattered against the roof of the shaman’s house, where we sat conducting a whispered interview on a pile of blankets by the fireside. The red record button of my handheld recorder blinked in the darkness. I strained my ears to catch what Taita Antonio, a shaman, ex-political leader, and land defender of the Kamëntsá people of southwest Colombia, said next: “Our fight is for life and for water. The páramo is life.”

A wave of nausea and a bout of psychedelic visuals passed over me as the ayahuasca I had imbibed an hour before began to take effect. Still, I was determined to follow this thread. If I was in the Sibundoy Valley and among the Kamëntsá to investigate the social movement for territorial recuperation and autonomy currently underway in the community, I shouldn’t let a few mere hallucinations during a late-night curing ceremony distract me from my work. Especially important to understand, it seemed to me, was what Antonio was saying about the páramo, an alpine wetland ecosystem unique to the Andes of South America. Colombia sources most of its drinking water from its páramos, but they are increasingly under threat, especially in Indigenous territories like that of the Kamëntsá.

“Can you go into that a little more?” I asked as the walls began to wriggle with illusory snakes.

Taita Antonio, apparently unphased, though he had drunk more than me, continued. He spoke at length. The following is my transcription and translation of what he said, reproduced with permission.

The human body is 70% water. The páramo is so important in Colombia, as we have so many. The páramos are threatened by megamining in search of gold, also by monoculture to plant potatoes. As monoculture has invaded the páramos, the farmers have been burning them and all that.

Let me tell you, speaking ancestrally, ayahuasca has alerted us to the issue of water conservation. Ayahuasca is preventative, today it is inviting us to conserve nature. 15 years ago, I took the medicine and I had a profound vision in which ayahuasca told me that our water was going to run out. Now we’re seeing the symptoms that come when the water runs out, and it’s because of human intervention. Maybe the medicine is inviting us to return to nature, to conserve it.

Right now, we still have the means to restore health to the planet. Our páramos give us pure water, really pure, which you can drink with no problem. Do you know why? Because there, in the páramos, is a type of algae that works to filter the water. Studies have shown that inside those algae there is a type of herb. From this we understand that páramo water is very healthy. Sometimes we human beings haven’t understood that, thinking we’re above it all, but we have to realize that all the gold and minerals that we extract from the páramos will be no good at all if we don’t have water, and we’re contaminating the water with other types of chemicals.

The páramos are threatened by mineral extraction and then the water contaminants that end up there, like mercury, for example. And that’s a serious threat to our health. We’ve seen evidence from other places that, due to such pollution, people who drink that water are giving birth to deformed children. That worries us a lot and it’s our call to action to take care of the water, because in Colombia we drink about 3% of all water fit to drink. Imagine, for example, the Sumapaz Páramo, close to Bogotá, which gives water to the whole city, but only 10% is potable. All the rest, 90%, is contaminated. This is evidence of our poor integration. Capitalism, monoculture, a whole system which has taught us to pollute and not to have environmental consciousness with the planet.

Taita Antonio trailed off. The fire crackled, the rain pattered, and I tried not to surrender myself to another sudden wave of nausea. Soon, Antonio rose to attend to his patients, putting our interview on hold. The conversation continued off and on throughout the night and into the morning, though eventually I put away my recorder and gave in to the effects of the spirit vine.

Later, mulling over Taita Antonio’s words, I realized that despite the problems he identifies, which are both pressing and depressing, a sense of optimism underscores his narrative. He rightly understands that the ongoing destruction of Colombia’s most ecologically important biome, which is only being hastened by global climate change, is a serious and potentially deadly problem. Still, he finds reason for hope that the destructive processes underway in the páramos can be reversed—that we can return to nature, choose to conserve rather than continue to degrade it, and restore health to the planet.

The successes of the social movement for territorial defense in the Kamëntsá community bear out this optimism. In 2016, the Kamëntsá succeeded in winning a major case that went to the Ministry of the Interior, settling a 316-year land dispute in their favor and formally restoring lands claimed by the Kamëntsá going back to the year 1700. However, this win comes after previous decisions in which the Colombian state settled disputes in favor of multinational mining companies by arguing that there were no Indigenous people on lands that, in fact, have always belonged to the Kamëntsá.

The Kamëntsá have not only taken their land disputes to the national government but have shown their opposition to development and extractive projects in their territory through acts of civil disobedience. A key example is the 2012 March for Life, Territory, Sovereignty, and Dignity, in which hundreds of Kamëntsá protestors, together with representatives of five other Indigenous communities in the region, marched for three days over the páramo to the regional capital city of Mocoa to demonstrate their opposition to a planned road project. The project was soon put on hold—indefinitely. Every time the state and development companies try to revive it, they face another wave of fierce opposition from Kamëntsá land defenders.

The importance of preserving and recuperating Kamëntsá culture for territorial defense should also not be understated. As my collaborators have explained to me, as long as the language lives, so does their thought system. And as long as their thought system is intact, the Kamëntsá will always love and defend their territory, which each member of the community is ritually bound to from birth. This understanding crystallized for me during another conversation with Taita Antonio, weeks after the ayahuasca ceremony at his house. As we walked along a mountain path over the beautiful and verdant Sibundoy Valley with the Territorial Guard, an autonomous and ethnically mixed Kamëntsá-Inga unit of land defenders who patrol the territory for trespassers and violators, Taita Antonio said to me:

Our territory has its soul, its life, its air, the same air that gives us life. We won’t let them take advantage and leave our territory without soul, without air. Why do we defend the territory? For those on the way, the children, the youth, all those still walking behind us. For them we defend the territory, so that one day they’ll have a place to say, “thanks to the elders, those who came before, for leaving us this territory.”

Bread and Roses: Understanding What a Union Will Bring

Joe Hill — Sat, 01 Apr 2023 00:00:00 -0700

The clock has nearly struck midnight, and the fate of student workers within the University of Oregon will soon be decided. Either we will have a union, or we will not. As the deadline to collect signed union cards approaches, the University of Oregon Student Workers has buckled down for the final stretch of the race. During this critical time, we ought to understand the implications of both our victory and defeat within this struggle.

The results of defeat are obvious: things will continue as they are. Student workers will continue to be paid pocket change while our bosses gorge themselves on the extortionately inflated prices they set. Vulnerable comrades will continue to be abused and harassed by their managers who by all rights should have been swiftly removed from their positions. Our pay will continue to arrive lazily while most of us live paycheck to paycheck. Shift meals, which were once free for us, will continue to eat into what little pay we get. Our latent power will continue to be suppressed, and our status as the invisible pack mules of this university will solidify.

This would be the bitter result of our defeat, a result none of us wish nor deserve. However, it is not the path we are destined to follow. Through the heroic efforts undertaken by the organizers of the UOSW, we stand upon the precipice of unionization. Currently they have over 1700 union cards signed, with under 400 to go before they have over half of the student workers as signatories - the prerequisite legally required to form a union. Over the past few weeks, they have seen an explosive growth in the number of signatories and the pace is only getting faster. While victory is not yet guaranteed, it is safe to say that it is that the likely outcome will favor us. In this case, we must look towards the future: what would a union bring us?

To answer this question and a few others, I interviewed Will Garrahan, a prominent organizer for the UOSW who was recently fired by the university. He laid out the situation plainly: Currently, the student workers of the University of Oregon face a number of abuses at the hands of our bosses. We are paid too little, we are paid too infrequently, we are harassed by our superiors (who face few consequences for this harassment), what little we do make is taken away from us by high tuition fees, shift meals, and the overpriced rent of tombs someone erroneously called “dorm rooms.” While there are certainly more grievances than this, these are the principal issues faced by the majority of student workers.

Many of these issues have gone unresolved for years and are only getting worse with time. The only way for us to right these wrongs is to organize into a body which poses a real threat to the powers-that-be in this university. A student workers union, with the ability and willingness to strike or engage in other actions hostile to the corporate overlords of this college, is the only tool we have to force these issues. A union is the only way we are ever getting paid biweekly and more than 15 dollars to the hour, the only way we will ever regain our free shift meals—a benefit student workers enjoyed in the past, and the only way that we will gain protection from abusive managers who still consider themselves free to harass and demean us.

However, a union means more than just the realization of our rights as workers. It also is the vehicle through which we may democratize our workplace and make working as a student worker meaningful. Will emphasized this point in our interview, outlining how our workplace democracy will function. We would have committees of workers in every workplace, with elected stewards representing their workers in a steward’s council. These stewards would remain closely and personally involved in their workplaces. This would ensure that we have a body both with the coordinating ability to organize us if mass action is required and that our union remains able to listen to what we need from it. Will also made the critical point that open bargaining and our voices would be of paramount importance. This contract is for US, and we must therefore be able to read and modify the terms to our needs.

In the organization of our union we can also take inspiration from other student workers who have managed to unionize their own workplaces. The Dartmouth Student Worker Collective, of Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, won an incredible 21 dollar an hour wage plus paid sick and mental health leave. The Columbia University Resident Advisors (Columbia CURA) put forward their demand for union recognition on February 13th, demanding $13,000 in raises for some RAs, a 13 hour reduction in weekend duty shift hours, and the creation of an RA advisory board. As more and more student workers across the country unionize, it is becoming clear that we are turning a new page in the history of labor organization in the United States. If we unionize and achieve our goals, we can become an inspiration to other student workers to do the same.

The impact of the University of Oregon unionizing cannot be understated. We would be the largest independent student worker union in the country, and the largest student worker union at a public university. It would show that it is possible for student workers to organize on a large scale, and it would be the first increase in student power on campus in decades. Moreover, it would provide a powerful platform for pro-student advocacy on campus. With a union at our backs, we could advocate for reduced tuition, lower dorm rent, more reasonable food prices, more pay for teachers and other staff critical to the education of students, and a greater influence over the government of our university. In other words, a win for the union is a win for all the students of the University of Oregon.

How can you help form this union? If you are a student worker, and have not yet signed a union card, do so! They can be found in EMU room 006c, a UOSW table, or even a coffee stand! You can also get one by contacting a union organizer. Once you have signed the card, you can turn it in again at EMU room 006c, a UOSW table, or by reaching out to organizers on social media or in person (unfortunately the coffee stands do not take signed union cards). The deadline is Friday, April 7th, at noon. Be sure to turn yours in as soon as possible! We are so close, all we need is one last push, and we can all make history. I implore you, not as some faceless journalist but as your fellow comrade and student worker, please go sign a union card. If we can do this, if we can get our union, the sky’s the limit.

“No more the drudge and idler—ten that toil where one reposes— But a sharing of life’s glories: Bread and Roses, Bread and Roses”. — James Oppenheim, 1911

Dark Brandon Makes the Trains Run on Time: Union Busting and East Palestine

Dorian Blue — Sat, 01 Apr 2023 00:00:00 -0700

On February 3rd, at around 9pm, a 50-car Norfolk Southern train carrying toxic materials derailed. Tons of vinyl chloride and other harmful chemicals involved in the making of plastics, spilled into the area surrounding the town of East Palestine and the Ohio River. The residents of the town were then evacuated and the EPA and local government began evaluating what kind of cleanup measures needed to be taken. It is an environmental catastrophe of epic proportions, yet all guilty parties have begun the effort to minimize it and deny that such a thing happening was inevitable.

The disaster happened because of regulatory rollbacks in the Trump era and refusal to allow railroad unions and improve working conditions for workers. Barack Obama pushed for safer railway transportation through his attempted mandate of electronically controlled pneumatic (ECP) brakes on trains with more than 20 cars. ECP braking is a system in which cars are simultaneously slowed down rather than being gradually brought to a stop car-by-car.

Many groups and individuals involved with the transportation industry have praised this system as something that would significantly help reduce the severity of train accidents, but unfortunately this mandate was repealed by the Trump administration due to the regulation not being “economically justified” following massive lobbying attempts from rail companies, including Norfolk Southern. These cost cutting short-cuts in the railway industry are not new, and are a part of a system called “precision scheduled railroading,” which focuses on maximizing efficiency with longer and heavier trains to cut costs and deliver more profits.

The adverse effects of this exploitative system go further than the trains themselves, as more than a fifth of the railroad staff employed by Norfolk Southern, CSX, and Union Pacific were laid off throughout 2017-2021, further maximizing profits for each corporation (Bove). Combine these firings with outsourced maintenance, increased train lengths, and reduced safety inspections, and you get a collection of companies sacrificing the well-being of their employees for the benefit of their bank accounts. So much so that railroad carriers have paid out an estimated 196 billion dollars in stock buybacks and dividends to their shareholders since 2010 according to Surface Transportation Board Chairman Martin Oberman in a September speech.

These profits can primarily be attributed to an abused workforce that was forced to go on strike because of low wages, lacking sick days, staff shortage concerns, and limited time off due to the massive cost-cutting. On December 2nd, President Joe Biden ended the strike before it could truly happen after union negotiations did not reach an ultimate agreement. Biden justified the passing of the bill through the potential economic implications a strike would have.

“It was tough for me but it was the right thing to do at the moment — save jobs, to protect millions of working families from harm and disruption and to keep supply chains stable around the holidays,” Biden said, adding the deal avoided “an economic catastrophe.”

Unfortunately, Biden’s justification of “protecting working families from harm” fails to account for the thousands of people he denied a right to protest against their over-demanding work conditions in one of the most important industries in the country. Many railroad workers are unable to truly have autonomy outside of work, as the current attendance policies mandate workers to be available to work within 90 minutes of all hours of the day throughout every day of the year, with any time off or absences resulting in “point deductions” which can eventually lead to their termination.

Congress’ passing of this bill is an explicit message to anyone in the transportation industry: your labor is more important than your well-being. Employers do not regard any of the actions taken outside of the workplace as valuable, but expect workers to operate at their highest capacity to make up for the lack of staff they disposed of to maximize profits. Rather than taking steps to mitigate the more than 1,000 train derailments occurring a year according to the Department of Transportation, railroad companies and our government have unsurprisingly placed the state of the economy and annual revenues above the reasonable requests of the people who make the operation of these systems possible.

“The industry needs to be brought back under control,” Michael Paul Lindsey, a locomotive engineer and member of Railroad Workers United, a group representing workers from different unions, told Fortune. “We have problems with these massive long trains everywhere along the way, and companies are insistent that it has to work, even if we cut corners doing it.”

While the plight of railroad workers continues, the residents of East Palestine are facing a long and perilous road ahead of them too. With neither Norfolk Southern or the government willing to take actual action and accountability, their homes will never be safe or healthy again. At a recent town hall meeting, a regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency, Debra Shore, told residents that they haven’t found chemical levels that pose health concerns, a bold-faced lie. In response, she was shouted and booed at by the crowd.

The decision made to set the chemicals alight in a controlled burn shortly after the derailing is being particularly scrutinized. Vinyl chloride was burned in high amounts and turned into a colorless gas. This gas is associated with brain, liver and lung cancer as well as lymphoma and leukemia. Residents have been reporting headaches, rashes, sore throats, nausea, and eye and skin irritation with such frequency that a medical clinic has been opened in the area. These are just the symptoms immediately after returning to the area; the implications of what the long-term health effects could look like is devastating.

“They’re all scientists, they’re sitting up here telling us nothing is wrong,” one resident said to Mayor Trent Conaway during a city hall. “I want you to tell me why everyone in my community is getting sick!”

Caution is being taken by many nearby cities and companies that source water from the area. Cincinnati decided to temporarily halt all intake of water from the Ohio River, which was affected by the spill. The Ohio River connects to the Mississippi River and that encompasses 40% of the U.S’s total watershed. This means the exposure is far more widespread than the government and railroad executives will ever admit.

The sheer amount of negligence and apathy being displayed towards the well-being of both the railroad workers and East Palestine residents is appalling, but not surprising. Major environmental disasters are seen as just the cost of business in the late capitalist hellscape we live in. The sooner any signs of damage are brushed under the rug and silenced, the better.

Legislation / Union Sources:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/nov/30/us-rail-strike-unions-decry-biden-proposal

Biden signs bill to block U.S. railroad strike | Reuters

For Railworkers, Sick Days Weren’t the Real Issue — It Was Basic Control of Their Lives (jacobin.com)

archive.ph | Rail workers criticize cost-cutting and lax safety in Ohio crash | Fortune

East Palestine / Train Derailment Sources:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/27/ohio-train-east-palestine-norfolk-southern-pr-push

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64788674

https://www.npr.org/2023/02/23/1158972561/east-palestine-train-derailment-ntsb-preliminary-report-wheel-bearing

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ohio-train-derailment-contamination-fears-spread-beyond-east-palestine-fc634e6

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/02/20/eubz-f20.html

https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/25/us/ohio-train-derailment-east-palestine-saturday/index.html

https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/east-palestine-ohio-train-disaster-2-22-23/index.html

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/25/revealed-us-chemical-accidents-one-every-two-days-average

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/train-derailments-us-2023-how-many-b2289173.html

How many train derailments have there been in the US in 2023? (yahoo.com)

https://abcnews.go.com/US/east-palestine-residents-confront-town-leaders-norfolk-southern/story?id=97608016

“If you have a train near you or a waterway near you, this is a problem for you too,” she said. “Stand up, stand with us and we’re gonna fight until the promises are kept.” – Jessica Conrad, resident of East Palestine

Pierre Clastres: Anarchist Anthropologist

Serbal Vidrio — Sat, 01 Apr 2023 00:00:00 -0700

Anthropology as a discipline may be more susceptible than most to infusion–not to say intrusion–by the political perspectives of its practitioners. This was certainly true of the outwardly colonial character of the discipline in its early days, when no attempt was made to hide the racist and imperialist beliefs and aims which underpinned its development. However, since the advent of a more critical anthropology in the early twentieth century which saw the advent of notions such as ethnocentrism and cultural relativism, and especially after the strengthening of critical trends in social science and philosophy in general in the postwar decades, anthropology has undergone considerable shifts in its political substrata. Some anthropologists of the postwar period sought to distance themselves from the colonial projects of their precedents, instead adopting more radical political projects–for instance, Marxism, anarchism, and feminism, to name a few. Within the camp of anarchist anthropology, few made greater contributions than the ethnologist and theorist Pierre Clastres.

Pierre Clastres (1934-1977) was a French anarchist anthropologist who conducted ethnographic fieldwork within Indigenous communities in several regions of South America, namely the Aché and Nivaclé of Paraguay and the Yanomami of Venezuela. From his fieldwork among the Aché Clastres wrote the classic ethnography Chronicle of the Guayaki Indians (1972). His most significant publications, however, are the two books of fieldwork-derived theory which together condense his main theses: Society Against the State (1974) and Archeology of Violence (1980). Before summarizing his theoretical contributions, it is important to situate Clastres within the disciplinary and theoretical context in which he worked.

Clastres was a student of Claude Lévi-Strauss, one of the most influential anthropologists of the twentieth century. Lévi-Strauss was a proponent of structural anthropology, which essentially posits that there are deep structures innate to human consciousness that find expression in elements superficially different but structurally homologous across all cultures–the conclusion being that all cultures are, on the structural level, essentially analogous. Lévi-Strauss’s project was to uncover those basic structures which he thought underlie all cultures. In this project Lévi-Strauss was influenced by Marx, who similarly thought in terms of patterns with a set number of possible combinations–in Marx’s case, stages in a unilineal theory of history. Marx, in turn, was influenced by Hegel, and the dialectics of both are echoed in Lévi-Strauss’s theory of structures based on pairs of binary oppositions. Lévi-Strauss was also partial to Rousseau, whose universalizing philosophy finds expression in the anthropologist’s work.

If all this sounds baroque and a little obscurantist, it’s because it is–the structuralism of Lévi-Strauss was based on limited ethnographic evidence and has been criticized as taking on a life of its own as free-floating armchair theory unattached to concrete analysis. Clastres seemed to recognize this, taking cues from structuralism while disregarding its more abstract or fanciful notions and firmly grounding his theory in ethnographic experience–namely, his own.

One of Clastres’ basic theses is that the question of power, which was at that time being taken up by the likes of Michel Foucault, is a political one. Clastres begins the first essay of Society Against the State with an inquiry: “Can serious questions regarding power be asked?” He quickly clarifies the terms of the inquiry: “At issue is the space of the political, at whose center power poses its questions.” In other words, power is political; when we reference one we signify the other. This is an affirmation central to Clastres’ understanding of power: power is vested in the political sphere, which is that of culture. Power is not, he assures us at the beginning, a biologically innate fact, “a vital necessity”; rather, it is immanent to culture, where it is the social and not the biological to which we must attend.

Clastres proposes that in what he calls “primitive” societies–the dated terminology, while not to be excused, is typical of the time–political power is not coercive nor subordinating, nor can it be, precisely because these societies are undivided and are therefore organized in such a way as to actively oppose and derail any process or effort that might tend towards division of the social body. This brings us to the crux of Clastres’ theory of power: his thesis that societies without a state, like the Indigenous South American cultures he worked with, may better be conceived as societies against the state.

This thesis requires some unpacking. Clastres argues that in undivided society, power is necessarily dispersed; it cannot be wielded by one individual or portion of society over or against another, for that would be to introduce division. Such division creates two basic classes from which the existence of the state in all its forms proceeds: those who command and those who obey, masters and subjects. The basis of power in general is, in Clastres’ schema (echoed later in the work of activist anthropologists like Marshall Sahlins and David Graeber), debt; and it is the directionality of debt which determines whether power is concentrated or, as in the case of undivided societies, whether it is dispersed, the common property of society itself. In short, the indebtedness of leaders to society is the condition for power’s dispersion; the indebtedness of society to its leaders is the condition for the concentration of power, and it is this concentration which is the basis of social division—the death of undivided society and the emergence of the state, of masters who hold power over society.

Undivided society is not characterized by lack, whether of technology, material affluence, or the state; it is a society which develops technology and requires work of its members only to the extent necessary to provide for the satisfaction of energy needs. This raises the question of where the idea of work as a central and necessary facet of social life has its roots: it is “the question of the origin of work as alienated labor.” And here it is again debt which comes into play, for only in a power relationship wherein a majority is held to be indebted to a minority can the latter demand of the former work of a kind and degree beyond that which is necessary for the provision of needs; wherein those who hold power tell those subject to it that “you must pay what you owe us, you must perpetually repay your debt to us.” And it is when this relationship arises that the state is also emergent. The political division of power precedes the economic division of power; the emergence of the state precedes and conditions the emergence of class division.

According to Clastres, the desire for freedom is immanent in human nature itself. The state, which has monopolized the political sphere in most societies today—although it was and remains an historically contingent configuration—requires the desire for submission on the part of society in order to function. What Clastres terms “the misfortune” (i.e., the emergence of the state) comes to pass when society no longer wants to be free, but desires to be ruled. And undivided society does not want to be ruled. In undivided society, the will to freedom suppresses the will to submission; the “evil desire” must not be realized; society is against the state.

A certain melancholy and a sense of grave injustice reminiscent of that which pervades Tristes Tropiques, Lévi-Strauss’s magnum opus, is present in Clastres’ Chronicle of the Guayaki Indians, and is even detectable in some of the essays I have discussed in this overview, scholarly conventions notwithstanding. In Clastres’ quasi-apocalyptic vision, the state has done what it set out to do, what it projected as the inevitable sign of progress: under different guises but essential in form, it has nearly succeeded, and soon enough will have totally succeeded, in erasing difference, in homogenizing, in reducing and compressing, drawing everything and everyone into its mass…

But Clastres was wrong. Insofar as he projected the imminent demise of the Indigenous groups he worked with, history has proven him wrong–all the cultures he worked with, far from remaining trapped in a past from which they could not escape, soon to be swept aside by the unstoppable advance of modernity and the state (as Clastres seems to have imagined), remain vigorous still today. And there is an uncomfortable exoticism and primitivism in his thought that has rightly been criticized as romantic and Othering. As one reviewer of Chronicle of the Guayaki Indians has aptly put it,

“Clastres presents his sensational findings in the most neutral way possible: to see everything in the Atchei’s way of life, even their cannibalism, as eminently reasonable, as exemplary of what in his conclusion he calls ‘the Atchei’s piety, the gravity of their presence in the world of things and the world of beings’ and ‘their exemplary faithfulness to a very ancient knowledge that our own savage violence has squandered,’ is to undermine his claim to knowledge along with the authority of whiteness that his scientific search had presumed. And yet it’s hard to forgive him that assumption of authority, or his belief that the Atchei were doomed. In 2008 an Atchei woman was appointed Minister of Indigenous Affairs in Paraguay.”

And yet, though wrong in his pessimism about Indigenous futures–and perhaps wrong in some of his more generalizing theoretical claims, too–what Clastres shows us, as all good thinkers do, is that alternative ways of being are possible, that what is now is not what always was nor what always must be. The ineffaceable mark of difference, of alternate possibility, can still be evoked to remind us of what must not be forgotten.

SCOTUS Rules Without US

Brigham — Sat, 01 Apr 2023 00:00:00 -0700

The leaked Supreme Court opinion of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization last May sparked an increased awareness of the Court and the legislative power it holds but has since dissolved into the same general ignorance of the judicial branch evident before. With a jammed Congressional body such as the one we have now, the weight of each decision SCOTUS makes is significantly higher, as drafting a bill becomes near impossible for contested issues like religious expression, free speech, gun ownership, and environmental regulations. The overtly conservative Court has proven to be as dangerous as previously theorized when it comes to their recent rulings. There are several key cases you may have missed, and an upcoming case which could considerably change the future of elections.

In Jones v. Mississippi, the conservative bloc on the Court ruled in favor of the state deeming that juveniles do not need to be deemed incorrigible, or beyond hope of rehabilitation, to be given a life sentence. In Carson v. Makin, the court ruled that a Maine program excluding religious schools from a state tuition program violated the free exercise clause of the First Amendment. This decision opposes the precedents established by previous Courts that rule according to the establishment clause rather than the free exercise clause. This decision along with a few others are opening the door for future rulings regarding the relationship of governing and faith to be adjudicated according to a claim of religious expression rather than the political principle instituted by the Founding Fathers of a separation of church and state. In West Virginia v. EPA, the Court decided to reduce the agency’s ability to regulate emissions, as it limits its power to control carbon emissions at individual power plants. The Court determined that the EPA does not have the right to operate under the Clean Power Plan rule they drafted in 2015, which aimed to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 32% before the year 2030.

The Supreme Court’s power is often overlooked and understated in current political discussions, and the past few years of rulings are setting new precedents completely overhauling previous years of living constitutionalist philosophy defining the Court. Living constitutionalists view the Constitution as a living document that should be interpreted according to cultural shifts, and should be understood along the current state of society. Trump’s appointments of Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, and Neil Gorsuch created a 6-3 conservative majority on the increasingly partisan judicial body, and these judges are influenced by a doctrine known as “originalism,” which restricts the Constitution to its originally intended meaning according to the ancient ideology of the Founding Fathers.

Most of these recent rulings have been justified under the originalist principle and will hold large bearing over future cases and proposed legislation for years to come. Although many believe otherwise, the Court has never been truly bipartisan, as career politicians have served on the Court prior to and following their elections to Congress and other federal seats. The problem with the Court stems from a much simpler source: its configuration.

Justices are appointed by the sitting President and must be approved by a simple majority in the Senate after undergoing a series of hearings. This threshold used to be 60 votes to promote bipartisan solidarity for a justice, but former President Trump overhauled this procedural rule to avoid a filibuster during his nominations. None of his appointees received more than 54 votes compared to the 87 votes received by liberal justice Stephen Breyer, signaling the loss of a collective opinion regarding those serving on the Supreme Court. The more blatant issue comes in a further basic component, as a President who did not win the popular vote was given the power to structure a third of the nation’s highest judicial body. Furthermore, these completely undemocratically appointed judges will serve life terms, allowing for unpopular beliefs held by an ideological minority to be enacted through court legislation today, and in the many years to follow. The current makeup of the court has and will continue to support conservative viewpoints, and the three justices in the liberal bloc are completely helpless to act against it.

An interesting note regarding each of the conservative justices currently serving on the Court is their tie to a law organization known as the Federalist Society. Its origins can be traced to a group of Harvard, Yale, and University of Chicago Law students who wanted a place where their unpopular conservative viewpoints could be given a chance to oppose that of the more commonly held liberal ideology among their peers. Its influence can be tracked as far back as George Bush’s presidency, where an overwhelming amount of his appellate court nominees were members of the organization. The head of the institution is Leonard Leo, a Catholic originalist and textualist (interprets the Constitution adhering only to the words themselves) who provided President Trump with a list of prospective SCOTUS judges.

But how did these Federalist Society justices make their way up the judicial branch to the most prestigious Court in the country? Well, with a little backing from Charlie Koch and anonymous donors, anything is possible. Charlie is the CEO of Koch industries making him one of the richest men in the world, and who, like most other CEOs, is willing to do whatever it takes to increase the number in his bank account. Through Koch’s political group, Americans for Prosperity, he was able to support Kavanaugh through mailing, phone calls, and flyers. The group also pushed hard for Barrett, whose father worked for Shell and other organizations within the oil industry, as well as Gorsuch, whose mother presided over the EPA during Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Koch has supported Leo and the Federalist Society through his foundation.

Leonard Leo has spoken vehemently in favor of money’s role in shaping the federal judiciary, but if these “apolitical” justices have ties to those who got them into their seat, is it that hard to believe that the Supreme Court has become hollowed out in the same way Congress has by lobbying? In fact, many people who have tracked Leo’s career have said that one of his primary goals was to create a Court that would overturn Roe v. Wade, and to say that is all he accomplished would be a massive understatement.

The Federalist Society has essentially developed a lobbying system for the judicial branch, and the current makeup of the Court is likely to lead to reversals of decade old precedents set by earlier Courts, but there is one upcoming case that is particularly alarming. Moore v. Harper is set to enter discussions this term and will determine the constitutional validity of procedural protections against gerrymandering. The North Carolina Supreme Court has overturned a congressional map adopted by the state Legislature, as they concluded it stemmed from partisan gerrymandering, and that it violated the state Constitution guaranteeing equal voting power, legislative representation, and the right to free elections.

In 2019, the case Rucho v. Common Cause made its way to the Supreme Court, where the judges ruled 5-4 in an opinion stating that partisan gerrymandering is not a violation of the US Constitution, as it poses a question “beyond the reach of federal courts.” The Supreme Court will be determining whether the NC Supreme Court violated the elections clause, which provides that the organization of elections for senators and representatives is a power given to the state legislature. This interpretation, known as independent state legislative theory, fits right into the originalist viewpoint that makes up most of the Court, and previous rulings signal to a decision being made in favor of the gerrymandered map.

If the Court does in fact rule in favor of the state legislature, then the precedent supporting independent state legislative theory will be cemented into US Law. State legislatures will then have the sole and absolute power to regulate federal elections within their states, without any interference from state courts, constitutions, or ballot initiatives. After the 2020 election, many conservatives attempted to use this philosophy to justify overturning the results of the election. This ruling could open the door for more blatant gerrymandering in electoral maps and voter suppression laws, while also relieving the system of much needed checks and balances. The current Supreme Court will cement this era of American law and politics as a regressive one and could possibly be the end of any notion of a bipartisan judiciary.

The Importance of Student Voices: A Letter from the Collective

The Student Insurgent — Sat, 01 Apr 2023 00:00:00 -0700

As I begin the final term of my first year in Eugene and am starting my first full term with The Student Insurgent, I feel a good deal of reflection is in order. As I flew away from my life in rural upstate New York, I expected to feel the world open up to me and to be engulfed by an array of new experiences reaching out for me, but the romantic projections of my life after high school were met with the reality of the mundanity of the life I have always lived. Partying, studying, sporting events, and the other stereotypes defining college life are the same things I underwent during high school, but as I attempted to find my niche on campus I came upon the Student Insurgent.

Having written and produced content on social media for a couple of years prior to university, I had seen the impact my thoughts had when given an audience, and longed for a more palpable outlet than the digital sphere I was inhabiting. One Monday evening I finally decided to attend a general meeting for the Insurgent after seeing flyers throughout the fall, and after one meeting I felt completely rejuvenated. Looking through previous issues from the last few years made me feel like I could be a part of something greater, and seeing a motivated group of people dedicated to producing relevant and meaningful publications made me passionate about writing again.

Unfortunately, many people in our generation, especially those in school, are not inclined to pick up a newspaper or magazine, let alone take the time out of their days to read it along with their assigned classwork. As J. Ellis touched on in our previous issue, the potential power that a fully student-run activist publication wields on a college campus is immense, but if people do not take the time to read what we sacrifice ours for, is there any power behind the punch of a bunch of paper?

The simple answer is: yes, of course there is. The longer answer is a bit more complicated, and it relies on the people reading these words right now just as much as it relies on us here at the Insurgent. We need to promote the importance of our student body’s voice when it comes to administrative, social, and political issues here in Eugene, as well as around the country. Any movement or action begins with an awareness of the issue(s) at hand, and an expression of a desired end communicated through language on both small and large scales. The effort to unionize at UO is exemplary of one of these movements, and is a tangible demonstration of the power that an organization of student voices can have.

The vital aspect of awareness starts in visibility, and I am confident that we as a collective will make our presence felt in the coming years, but we could definitely use your help! Encourage your friends and family to read one of our issues or other tabloids lifting up the voices of students who want to be heard. People are more receptive to someone they know than a complete stranger, and all of the people here at the Insurgent have something to say, and we hope you get a chance to listen.

Dorian Blue:

Another winter has almost come and gone. It brings me into my worst moods, yet also inspires me during my many hours spent in the dark. I have to confront things, both inside myself and in the world around me. Spring has been seen as a time of rebirth for time immemorial and I hope this can be true of our publication too. We are in a period of transition and I want us to come out of it as strong as ever. Our place in the campus and community is important and shouldn’t be taken for granted. I certainly don’t: I hope all of you feel the same way and will support us in the ways you can.

ch0ccyra1n:

When I finished high school, I was disappointed in my prior experiences with attempting to start an anarchist zine publication in my local community, among other endeavors. I never really got any help with it and my ambitions died with failure to produce even a single zine. Since then, I’ve become far more jaded and pessimistic. Regardless, I eventually found The Student Insurgent and was able to write a few articles, as well as overhauling the website. The latter in particular was a creative outlet for my voice as a student and nerd, and I’m unsure what I’d do with my time if not for Insurgent existing. As we’re transitioning (it feels like we’re always in that mode of operation), this aspect will hopefully remain the backbone of our organization, as a fundamentally creativity-focused space for rad students.

S.V.:

As I wrote about in the last issue, I have a way of feeling out of place wherever I go. I mean that metaphorically, though it’s also true in a very literal sense as I write this blurb from Dakar, Senegal. Yet, since transferring to the UO in Fall 2021 and joining The Student Insurgent shortly after, I have been able to find a kind of community–and an important creative outlet–in the collective of like-minded radicals that keep this magazine going through its many ups and downs. Those of us who have seen the workings of the Insurgent from the inside know better than anyone that things aren’t always perfect and that mistakes, sometimes big ones, have been made. Still, what do we stand for if we abandon each other and our collaborative and creative endeavors when things get rough? The story of the Insurgent shows that the survival of the vital spaces of creativity, solidarity, and radical thought that we need now more than ever depends on developing and maintaining a culture of flexibility, gracefulness, and care at their core.

All it takes is one look into our archives to see how student voice translates to student power. Decades’ worth of old issues are testament to the long history of student-led agitation and advocacy efforts that begin here on campus, local efforts that over the years had impacts on a national scale. Look no further than the infamous ‘04 jesus-dick-pic issue: come on down to the ROAR Center to check out the binder full of hate mail and discover how empowering it feels to piss off the powers that be. If Hell truly exists, as if we’re not already living in it, then whoever contributed to that fateful ‘04 issue will almost certainly be burning up when their time comes. In the spirit of all those Insurgents that came before you and me, I attest that it’s a unique opportunity to be part of something that, for its entire duration, has amplified the perspectives of the historically disempowered. What we have is rare, so let’s not let it go extinct.

I begin by bringing this moment in our history to your attention not only because it packs a comedic punch; but also to make the case that the platform we have at our disposal here at the Student Insurgent is extremely powerful, if we create content and promote political movements that make it so. To forge revolutionary avulsions, we must continue to wage war with our words, dream of peace with our pens, and catalyze action with art. The creative space is an empowering one. And if print is truly dead, then we’re resurrecting it. Just Like Jesus, bitches!

As long as the UO is gullible enough to grant us funding, we will tend to this ferocity; we bite the hands that feed because they are feeding us poison. The antidote is the reclamation of power through art, and eventually action. Let this serve as a manifesto for the mission of this publication, no matter where it goes from here. Let it be known that:

We exist to agitate both contributors and audience: but not alienate. We intend to unite the student body against local injustices i.e. tuition spikes, antidemocratic governance structures, gentrification and displacement, labor violations, health and reproductive issues, immigration and racial inequalities, and mental health. We also intend to alert the local community to national and international causes. We believe this agitation is a key ingredient to agency.

We exist to give voice to the people: we can’t print without YOU. Our collective is defined by the individuals that constitute it. We embrace diversity of opinions, values, and backgrounds because it improves the perspectives we promote using our platform. ALL are welcome, come challenge us, yourselves, and the broader community.

We exist as a forum for political exploration and expression: tired of politics? Same. Use us as a vehicle to vent your frustrations. Use this platform as an opportunity to challenge and change your worldview, we are the STUDENT Insurgent, after all. Come learn, yell, commiserate, and create change with us.

We exist as a resource for activists in our community, in prisons, and across the nation: we will always do our best to provide timely promotion of actions big and small. Send your flyers in, and ask us for our best wheatpasting tips to spread the word. We aim to be embedded in the activist network and foster coalition building and political action. Therefore, we always welcome the perspectives of (anti-fascist) non-students.

We exist as a creative outlet: to uplift art and artists. If you can dream it, we’ll probably print it. Share your talents (or lack of) with the world. To foster this space, we strive for accessibility in our publication structure.

We exist to connect people to political reality (and action): so that we can expose, dissect, and destroy all vestiges of oppression.

We exist in defiance of: imperialism, colonialism, capitalism, white supremacy, wealth inequality, homophobia and transphobia, sexism, ableism, neoliberalism [in no particular order] … FUCK THAT SHIT!! With our rage we are bringing about a new age, are you in?

The Insurgent has been many things over the years, but it has never strayed from these central ideas. If these sentiments speak to you, inspire you, consider stopping by the ROAR center sometime or shoot us a letter or email.

Tp'ed on Campus

Barbara Berkeley — Sat, 01 Apr 2023 00:00:00 -0700

On February 7th, the UO chapter of Turning Point USA hosted an event called ‘Born in the USA.’ A highly anticipated event, with 37 likes on the flyer. The two speakers — Stephen Davis, spelled David on the flyer, and Anthony Watson — are Black republicans. They both have an alpha male persona, with lots of big American flags, guns, and trucks; it’s a classic M.O that glorifies hateful ideology.

Last year, the TPUSA chapter was not an active organization on campus. The infamous Charlie Kirk talk was supposed to be held at the Graduate Hotel downtown, but due to local backlash, moved to a golf club in Creswell. However, since TPUSA is now having regular meetings and has a leadership team, they are entitled to hold events on campus. The can of worms has been opened unfortunately, and TPUSA has already been tabling at the EMU and in front of Lillis since fall term. They want to appear as friendly — the perfect gateway to their twerpy brand of fascism.

Anthony Watson is a former olympian who was “cancelled” for his “conservative values.” I found no record of this besides TPUSA itself, so it was most likely a petty Twitter drama that he used to further his victim complex.

Stephen Davis is described as “once left-leadning (that’s how they spell it on the website), he is now a staunch conservative who fights the liberalized agenda.” He also calls himself “MAGA Hulk’’ online, as he is a body builder and enjoys being an alpha male.

Every desk had a TPUSA poster, and Dorian’s poster read “CAPITALISM CONSERVES.” I was a bit confused when I saw that, because conserving is generally the opposite of what capitalism does.

About 25 people were present, though this ebbed and flowed over the course of the event. TPUSA’s VP said that they hoped to “engage in civil discourse” as she introduced Davis and Watson. And discourse they did get. Davis and Watson wanted to make it clear that they weren’t there to change peoples’ minds. They emphasized how much they love different opinions, while everyone knew that was an obvious performance and lie. Then, they began going through their rehearsed points, mostly revolving around how important it is to love America and that modern American men are weak soyboys.

They also had thoughts on racism and critical race theory, believing that their individual success stories means that systemic oppression doesn’t actually exist and everyone should stop complaining about it. We’re white leftists; we can’t speak on the experiences of Black conservatives, but it was obvious that they were co-opting left-wing language to further their conservative agenda. They would say things like, “you’re silencing Black voices,” or “it’s Black History Month,” to people who openly disagreed with them, while making fun of that kind of rhetoric in the same turn.

To prove this point, Davis had an entire quirky “everybody clapped” story in which a Black man at a gym he went to supposedly admitted that he was right and so true for being red pilled. I’m pretty sure I saw the same story on Tumblr ten years ago. Or maybe that story was about a bus. Who knows?

A lot of the audience was random outside weirdos, including a guy wearing camo who, unprompted, brought up pedophilia and beating up homeless people.

“People are dying to get into America.” That’s a good thing? America ruined almost every democratically elected government in Latin and South America because they were so terrified by the communist and socialist governments that were forming in the region.

About 40 minutes into the event, someone interrupted the speakers to give their own opinion on the topic at hand, and was met with immediate hostility. What ensued was, to put it mildly, an absolute shitstorm. There was a group of leftists in the back of the room dressed in bloc who interrupted the speakers, yelling at them and calling them fascists, and in turn, the speakers yelled at the disrupters and called them fascists. About 44 minutes into the event, the cops got involved. The protestors were told that they were welcome to stay, but if they were not willing to be “respectful and [willing to] have valid conversations,” they needed to leave, or they would be escorted out and charged with unlawful trespassing.

While we at the Insurgent support protest against fascist gatherings, the way the protest went at this event ultimately seemed unconstructive. The disruptors successfully disrupted, but their arguments against the speakers were poorly-formed and fueled the victim complex of every conservative in the room.

A UO events staff person walked in and asked Davis to stop interacting with the disruptors for a few minutes so that the situation could be sorted out. He began yelling at her, one of the people who was critical for the event even happening.

It can be fun to clown on right-wing thought leaders, but watching them in action is depressing. Every argument they made was circular and contained at least a couple logical fallacies, and all their evidence was either anecdotal, wilfully misinterpreted, or completely false. Every argument against them was used to fuel their victim complex, and anyone who disagreed loudly was yelled at, and called a “child” and a “snowflake.” It seems like there’s some irony somewhere in there. Maybe that’s just me.

During the Q&A, I, Barbara Berkely, asked the speakers what they thought the role of women in society is. They said the role of women is to be nurturing, and supportive. We’re meant to be homemakers, to support the men around us, and to be the glue that holds society together. Of course, they didn’t talk about the role of women during their speech because they’re men and they don’t want to speak over me or my experiences. Thanks for that, guys. I told them that what they were describing is gender essentialism. The conservatives in the room all gave me blank stares, so I had to give a brief definition of gender essentialism, which was absolutely delightful.

At the end of the event, a non-student involved with TPUSA in the Northwest approached us and thanked us for disagreeing respectfully and not causing disruption. It was one of the most patronizing interactions I’ve ever had in my life. I love when fascists tell me I’m one of the good ones! Especially when the fascist in question is a man and obviously thinks less of me because I’m a woman! Mr. Rando, if you’re reading this, I don’t want your gratitude. You can fuck off with your fascist politics.

(Brigham)

This was my first time attending a Turning Point USA event, but the rhetoric and propaganda discussed did not at all catch me by surprise. The police presence at right-wing led events seems to be a staple of their meetings. The organizers voiced their anticipation of disruptors and members of ANTIFA being in attendance, beginning the event by asking everyone in attendance to remain civil. The typical talking points of reclaiming one’s manhood, name-calling of the left, and the sentiment that it is impossible for non-white people to uphold the pillars of white supremacy were all covered uninterrupted for the first third of the event.

When more disruptors arrived wearing bloc, the speakers took notice, but did not address them until they were called out for an insensitive joke about STDs. What preceded was unorganized disruption and emotionally fueled biases erupting in the form of senseless back-and-forth yelling, which continued until the police made their presence felt, upholding the right for the presenters to maintain control of their event. Unsurprisingly, the two men at the front of the room could barely keep themselves under control, as they ‘asserted their manhood’ by getting in the face of two young people simply voicing their own opinions, which I perceived as an intimidation tactic, but I cannot speak for them.

Most of their reasoning for their views were held within the context of unverifiable anecdotes and baseless arguments which provided no true solutions to the problems they claim have arisen from “men taking a backseat role” in society. The toxic masculinity seemingly consumed the room when he discussed the five values men should strive to live by, and the purpose that every man possesses as simply being a man. The religious rhetoric that transpired was questionable to say the least, and sexist in its sentiment. After another disruption from the same two individuals mentioned before, the police escorted them out of the building, and the event continued without any disruption.

In the latter third of the event, a left-leaning member of the crowd, which had shrunk to about half the size after many disruptors were removed, started to engage in a direct conversation with the two speakers, who were receptive only because he had remained silent throughout the entire event. What transpired was the usual push and pull of opinions, and the nitpicking of vernacular from the speakers who had no true rebuttal to the points made by the attendee. The individual in the crowd had to leave early, and took a picture with the guests after shaking their hand. After his departure, an informal Q/A session transpired in which I was able to converse with the men for about five to ten minutes before I too left the event before its conclusion.

I attempted to question their ‘grindset’ of individualizing one’s life and the American ideal that “anyone can pull themselves up by their bootstraps to achieve success.” I approached their monetary-based perspective by questioning the value of a life revolving around money. What I got in return was a tightrope act in which they tiptoed around my points by claiming I had misappropriated their argument through my very easily formed assumptions of the points they were alluding to. I voiced my belief that sacrificing your community or things that have no tangible worth but fulfill an individual in the path to generating wealth is a bad thing, but the speaker’s rebuttal was simply a regurgitation of the previous points I had already mentioned. Before I could truly get into the points of my argument, I was cut off by someone asking for advice on how to break into the world of conservative media as an influencer, which the speakers and crowd were seemingly equally unreceptive of. I left thirty minutes before the end of the event, shaking the hands of the two speakers for respecting my point of view, knowing that both me and the men I just talked to had not been shaken from their positions in the slightest.

University of Oregon Students Protest Illegal Firing, Anti-Union Intimidation Tactics

UO Student Workers — Fri, 17 Feb 2023 00:00:00 -0700

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE


February 17th, 2023
UO Student Workers Union
uostudentworkers@gmail.com | (503) 819-0288

University of Oregon students gathered this afternoon in front of the Global Scholars’ Hall, where they charge a student was illegally fired for supporting a union organizing effort.

UO Student Workers is organizing a union for the nearly 3,000 undergraduate student workers on campus – including tutors, dining hall and recreation center workers, teaching and research assistants. Under Oregon law, if a majority of the workers sign union cards within six months, university administrators will be required to recognize and enter negotiations with the union – which would be the largest undergraduate student worker union in the country. Student workers are now in the peak period of collecting those cards, and are facing increasing intimidation tactics from university managers.

“UO managers have prohibited workers from talking about the union at work, or from wearing union pins while at work – both things that are clearly illegal,” stated UOSW member Elizabeth White. “Last weekend, one of the top union leaders was fired from his dining hall job for violating a rule that has never previously been enforced. His illegal termination came one day after a national story about our union appeared in The Nation magazine, featuring this student.”

In response to these acts, the union has filed a complaint with the Oregon Employment Relations Board, charging the university with violating student workers’ rights under state law. This afternoon, students gathered at the Global Scholars Hall to deliver a petition demanding Garrahan’s reinstatement.

Faculty, graduate students and local labor leaders voiced support for today’s protest.

“The most fundamental value of any university has to be respect for free speech – that includes the right of students to decide about unionization free from retaliation or intimidation,” stated UO professor David Luebke, Vice President for Academic Freedom of the American Association of University Professors’ Oregon chapter.

“UO student workers – like all workers everywhere – have the right to form unions without facing threats to their jobs. The University of Oregon is a big and respected institution in our town – but it’s not above the law,” said Jeff McGillivray, president of the Lane County Labor Chapter, AFL-CIO.

“Student workers are a valuable part of our campus community, they should be allowed to advocate for themselves as both students and workers. Students deserve to have a free and fair process during their union membership drive,” said UO professor Mike Dreiling, former President for United Academics University of Oregon.

“Graduate student workers at the UO have had a union for more than 40 years – you’d think that by now the administration would have stopped trying to intimidate people out of exercising their basic rights to seek better working conditions,” explained Emily Beatty, Vice-President of the Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation.

“Union means community, so we are currently building a relief fund to support our coworkers who are being fired or having their hours cut in response to their organizing efforts,” said Carolyn Roderique, UOSW member, President for Student Leadership Council for Resident Assistants. “Meanwhile, we are here to insist that the UO respect the law and our right to organize.”

Instagram: @uostudentworkers

Mastodon: @uostudentwrkers@emeraldsocial.org

Twitter: @uostudentwrkers

For more information, contact:


UO Student Workers Union
uostudentworkers@gmail.com
(503-819-0288)

Anarchist Leaks the Tsa No Fly List

ch0ccyra1n — Wed, 01 Feb 2023 00:00:00 -0800

A certain cat has been making the rounds across the security world as of late. Her name is Maia Arson Crimew (yes, really). She did it while “being bored and browsing shodan,” a search engine that allows for anyone to browse exposed ‘Internet-of-Things’ devices and other servers that may have been unintentionally exposed to the internet. While browsing, she managed to find an exposed Jenkins server (a server used to manage automation of software projects) belonging to CommuteAir, a US regional airline headquartered in North Olmsted, Ohio. On this server, she managed to find projects labeled noflycomparison and noflycomparisonv2 “which seemingly take the TSA nofly [sic] list and check if any of commuteair’s [sic] crew members have ended up there.”¹

When looking at these projects, she found that there were credentials for Amazon Web Services, a very commonly used cloud provider with monopolistic business practices² (just like everything else Amazon does!). With these, she could basically do anything she wanted with CommuteAir’s infrastructure, from spinning up new servers to reading databases from their website. However, even though she had these credentials, she didn’t actually have to use them, as she went back to the noflycomparison repository in the Jenkins server and found a certain file named nofly.csv.

“holy shit, we actually have the nofly list. holy fucking bingle. what?! :3”³

- Maia Arson Crimew

With this highly sensitive, personally identifying information in her hands, she did the responsible thing and is only releasing it to “journalists and human rights organizations”⁴ via DDOSecrets, a nonprofit which specializes in the release of classified information “in the public interest”⁵. I personally reached out to DDOSecrets on behalf of The Student Insurgent making sure to follow their protocols⁶, and received access the very next day. Unfortunately, my analysis is still ongoing so it will not be available in-time for the release of this issue. Be sure to check out studentinsurgent.org (you’re here right now!) and follow our social media accounts to get notified about updates.

Notes

Despair Hope and Motherhood in Colombian Cinema

Serbal Vidrio — Wed, 01 Feb 2023 00:00:00 -0800

Colombia is a country of contradictions. For ignorant gringos and other outsiders, its reputation as a warzone riddled with internal conflict, narcotrafficking, and organized crime precedes it and obscures this South American country’s rich history and cultural vibrancy. Before I went for the first time in 2019, my family fretted over my safety and my friends joked that I might be kidnapped. Yet over the three visits and nine or so months that I have spent in Colombia during the past few years, I’ve grown comfortable with the rhythms of life there, and the more familiar with the country I become, the more convinced I am that its violent reputation is harmful and undeserved.

But it pays not to grow complacent, nor to look at the world—wherever you are in it—through rose-tinted glasses. Colombia, like all countries, has its problems. Some of these are glaring, as many Colombians will be the first to point out. Inequality, poverty, and corruption remain prevalent across the board. The Colombian state, the traditional elite, transnational corporations, and right-wing death squads keep going into business with each other, as they have throughout Colombia’s 50-year internal conflict. For Indigenous and Afro-descendent Colombians, defending their communities’ territorial rights against extractive development projects and illicit cultivation is a deadly gambit. Femicide and domestic abuse are endemic. And should you walk down the street in any Colombian city, you will witness the masses of homeless, displaced, disabled, and immigrant people that the Colombian government continues to fail. For millions of Colombians, life is far from easy. But still, life goes on. When succumbing to despair is not an option—for one’s got to make a living—hope finds a way. For all its problems, many Colombians look to the future with hope, especially following the election of Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first leftist president, in 2022.

Film has always been an important medium for addressing both social problems and the intimate details and relationships of human lives. Colombia, with its generational cycles of structural violence, has produced its fair share of filmmakers whose cinematic eye and narrative style are clearly influenced by their country’s complicated history and present. Below are three recent Colombian films which skillfully depict the intersection of despair, hope, and motherhood—universal locus of both hope and despair—in this country’s complicated context.

Chocó, 2012, directed by Jhonny Hendrix Hinestroza:

In Colombia’s Blackest state and one of its poorest, where incessant rains make this stretch of Pacific coastal rainforest one of the wettest regions in the world, a young mother by the same name as the state—Chocó—struggles to buy her daughter Candelaria a cake for her birthday. Chocó’s dire poverty is accentuated by grueling mornings spent in the open-pit mines where she and other Black women pan for gold that will make others rich in return for pennies a day. In the evening, she washes neighbors’ clothes in the river to afford to send her children to school. By night, she returns to a ramshackle home where she is greeted—and frequently accosted—by the father of her children, a layabout who spends his days drinking and gambling.

A sense of despair and precarity looms as the viewer witnesses Chocó’s efforts to support her children while suffering racism and abuse from which there seems no possibility of escape. And all she wants is to buy her daughter a cake—until one night she snaps. This film serves as a disturbing meditation on the daily struggles faced by Afro-Colombian women and on the general situation of Colombia’s Blackest region, which is defined above all else by the state of poverty, exploitation, and institutionalized racism that reigns when people and places like Chocó are abandoned to oblivion and decay under an endless torrent of tropical rain. Still, under all that decay there smolders an ember of hope.

Una madre, 2022, directed by Diógenes Cuevas:

Following the death of his father, Alejandro leaves his family home in Medellín to “rescue” his mentally ill mother Dora from a convent in the Antioquian countryside where she has lived sequestered for the past twenty years. Not having seen his mother in all those years, Alejandro doesn’t know what to expect, but he’s sure that she isn’t as disturbed as his family has always told him. He arrives at the convent to witness with horror the physical abuse and condescension inflicted on the women institutionalized there and decides to break his mother out. With the police now after him, and discovering that his mother is indeed less able than he first assumed—she doesn’t even recognize him as her son—Alejandro is forced to make some hard choices as his hopes of a happy life reunited with his mother quickly unravel. This film asks what it means to love and to let go at the intersection of motherhood and mental illness. Alejandro discovers, rather too late, that what is best for both of them is not all that he wishes.

Amazona, 2016, directed by Clare Weiskopf:

Decades after her mother Val leaves her family for an isolated life deep in the Colombian Amazon, British-Colombian documentarian Clare Weiskopf, herself pregnant and soon to become a new mother, retraces her family history to determine just what went wrong between mother and daughter and to begin a journey of mutual healing. The viewer joins Clare in her exploration of her mother’s past, beginning with Val’s youth as an English hippie who ended up in Colombia in the 1960s for one love and left it for another. Treading a fine line between responsibility and freedom, the two women seek to come to terms with an understanding of both motherhood and personal identity. Along the way the viewer learns that it was tragedy—the death of her first daughter—that compelled Val to abandon her family, leaving an eleven-year-old Clare confused and hurt. With the passage of the years, some wounds close and others open, but the power of love and forgiveness—the need for hope to remedy despair—runs through this film’s narrative thrust.

Diasporic Bodies

Serbal Vidrio — Wed, 01 Feb 2023 00:00:00 -0800

There’s a word in Arabic, ghurbah, that one dictionary defines as “a feeling of longing for one’s native land, of being a stranger.” I think that feeling approximates what it is to live a diasporic being, but we diasporic bodies have no homeland.

Mine is the history of the Jews, my ancestors who, through exile and diaspora, learned to live with uncertainty and placelessness. Not like my friends among the Kamëntsá, whose ethnonym supposedly means “people of this place with our own thought and language.” It could be said that what drew me to them was their emplacement, so firm and immutable. The Kamëntsá say that the body is the first territory. Maybe so. But what happens when you lose the map?

The alluvium of the past, time’s sediment, grows ever skyward, piled like ruins built on ruins. Caked to the knees in mud and clay, I live wading through it. Thinking tries to thin the morass, to free the legs for running—running to outrun. I just didn’t realize then that you can’t think yourself out of the mud but must drag yourself out inch by inch.

The feeling of going nowhere fast. The feeling of moving to Alabama, or to what seemed a desert wasteland over the mountains shielding the valley of childhood, at six years old, and feeling horror under the weighty veil of a humid night. We’re stopped on a roadside, the highway is abandoned, there is a void where there was once, impossibly, a landscape. Only a gas station store with fluorescent lights that make for an artificially white interior. The clerk is undead. We step back outside, hear crickets in the cornfield, there is no wind and one would wonder (if one knew enough to wonder then) if the Earth were still turning.

There is a night that lives in memory, a night nestled deep in summers past. I remembered falling off my bike in the middle of a field, sprawled in the tilled dirt under the stars, and I wept—for I was unhappy in life, but loved and affirmed it all the same. There were orchards around and all was inscrutable. I wonder if I was changed by that night, whether something then took hold in me that has never left. Of course, change is always possible, ever happening, though one doesn’t always observe it in oneself. But on nights such as these, possessed by familiar moods, that night lost to remembered summers always enjoys a renaissance.

Running to outrun, running so as not to be outrun, the fear of being outrun, of having been outrun. It makes me want to pick up and leave, to turn away, to show my back, to challenge what has been prescribed, to defy the foretold, to deny the future. My life is my own. Spare the present the past. Free the future—or abolish it.

I take shelter in teen dreams, in memory, in nostalgia. I return to summer nights in fields and orchards under the stars—weeping, dirt under my fingernails, blessing life.

We must learn to take joy in the small mundanities of life. The cool wind through the window and its sound among the leaves of the trees and those on the ground, the moss on trees’ bark, the colors of the world, the feeling of embodiment, of being beings of flesh, blood, and bone. Even pain is a reminder and a blessing of the diversity and promise of life.

On the horizon is a desert, its face engoldened by the light of a sun rising or setting. I am leaving the primordial forest of the past and treading now upon its liminal sands. Beyond the crest of a sloping dune which I am beginning to ascend stretches a vague world of formless forms and imagined possibilities infinite in number. Clarity will come with the descent of the other side. In the ascent I choose optimism.

Yet we cannot avoid following our seasonal migratory routes, which alter little and always return us to the source, to the beginning, where our various journeys start and end. Or so it has been with me, and so, I expect, it will continue to be. As far afield as we may wander, some mysterious force draws us back to the point of departure: emotionally, psychically, if not physically—but physically too, as when I come over the familiar verdant hills on the approach to the prison of my childhood. And it is not always good to return, but perhaps it is necessary, though I have sometimes wished that it weren’t, that I could establish myself in permanent difference, that I myself could be other than I am. And to borrow another cliché—but one of which I am always reminding myself—it is a fact that wherever you go, there you are.

I’m learning to live with that. With a new year comes a new promise: wherever you are, take stock of the ground beneath your feet. Even diasporic bodies can find solace in ceaseless motion.

Introduction to Anarcho Nihilism

summerisle — Wed, 01 Feb 2023 00:00:00 -0800

What is anarcho-nihilism? Both anarchism and nihilism are chronically misunderstood words, so it only makes sense that the term would draw lots of confusion. Nihilism is often assumed to just be misanthropic and/or ‘doomer’. If one wants to get a good understanding of anarcho-nihilism, they will need to put these assumptions to rest.

Is Nihilism Just Another Word for Doomerism?

No — at least, it doesn’t have to be. “Doomerism,” as it’s called here, is the idea that everything and the world is fucked. There’s nothing we can do, and we just gotta ride it out, or lie down and die. While you can see nihilism like this it’s a much broader umbrella term. Nihilism, very simply put, is the belief/philosophy that there is no inherent meaning to anything, no deeper direction or layer — nihil, nothing. Despair, and therefore doomerism, is the most common response to the shittiness of the world, but it’s by no means the only response. In fact, nihilism in the context of anarcho-nihilism flips that on its head.

How Does Anarcho-Nihilism Flip It On Its Head?

Anarcho-nihilism finds joy in having no inherent strictures binding reality. It sees things such as time and society, along with race and gender, to be arbitrary and artificial. It rejects the dichotomy of despair and hope entirely, not being paralyzed by the former and disregarding the latter to inscribe its own arbitrary meaning of joy in the face of capitalist, colonialist horror.

Is Anarcho-Nihilism Reformist?

As a post-left ideology, there are some major departures from some of the fundamentals of traditional left-wing viewpoints. One which is of particular contention is the question of ‘reform or revolution?’ or as we shall see, an alternative to both of those strategies entirely. As Serafinski writes in Blessed is the Flame, “After two centuries of failed revolutions, nihilism has perhaps become even more disinterested in conventional socialist programs and radical milieus.” While this may seem at-first like a reformist argument (that revolution is unrealistic/leads to tyranny, so we should just reform the system), it is not. Rather, anarcho-nihilists argue for a rejection of any sort of interaction with order, whether it is revolutionary or reformist beyond hostility. This manifests as insurrection, which is distinct from revolution in that it does not seek to establish a new order, but is entirely set towards the sabotage and destruction of it by any means necessary. It is truly nihilist because it is a strategy focused on negation: abolition rather than change. We have seen glimpses of that even in traditional leftist circles, such as with the contemporary interest in prison abolitionism among even non-anarchists Although, the sincerity of those claiming it is dubious at best without abolishing the state.

Anarcho-Nihilism in a Larger Context

Speaking personally for a second (me being Summerisles), anarcho-nihilism, is, in my view, a call to action or challenge to the left at large. While knowledge and theory is absolutely important, and something I don’t want to de-emphasize, at the same time it feels like sometimes people can lose the forest for the trees. Caught in an endless circle jerk of debate, it can be easy to never get involved in action. Anarcho-nihilism is a call for action over discussion, to go out there and get shit done — to throw a wrench in the gears not for some greater overarching goal, but for the joy in destroying the gears. Rejecting the paralyzation of despair for the animation of joy, and turning that into a joyful defiance for defiance’s sake — that’s, in my view, the basis for anarcho-nihilism.

Letter From the Collective (Despair Issue)

The Student Insurgent — Wed, 01 Feb 2023 00:00:00 -0800

ch0ccyra1n: Alongside contributing to summerisle’s piece Introduction to Anarcho-Nihilism, I also took it upon myself to write the piece Anarchist Leaks the TSA No Fly List because it exposes the racism inherent to the security theater institution in the form of data visualization. This sort of approach to understanding institutional racism has previously been used by W.E.B. DuBois for the 1900 Paris Exposition, and I hope my article will be insightful. However, since I was unable to finish the data analysis in-time, the article will primarily go over the technical details until it is properly finished, where the web version will be updated.

J. Ellis: The journey I’ve been on with The Student Insurgent is the embodiment of hope and despair, an ebb and flow of constant contradiction. Hope and despair captures a revolutionary dialectic, the lowest of lows and highest of highs. I’ve seen this publication at its worst, and I’ve also seen some of its best times. As my last issue as an editor, it was important to me that we tell the story we’ve been living through in recent years. The climate for political organizing is tougher than ever, but also more necessary than ever. I don’t know what will happen to the Insurgent after I’m gone, and that prospect fills me with both dread and faith. I’ve exhausted myself of this venture; I grow tired but dare not fall asleep.

Summerisle: Despair is a paralyzing emotion. When engaging in any form of action its important to bring your anger with you, but it’s just as important to bring _joy _- joy at working with your comrades, joy at helping others, joy for the world you’re working for. Joy and anger are animating forces that thaw the ice of despair.ir

Serbal Vidrio: As the radical feminist saying goes, the personal is political, and in interweaving personal stories with political narratives, I have sought to bring this principle to life in my writing for The Student Insurgent. In this issue, I pair my thinking around issues of Indigenous autonomy in Colombia, of the despair inflicted by colonialism and the hope that has emerged from cultural and territorial resistance and reexistence, with the lows and highs of my own life story. As far away from Eugene as my writings are set, I hope that readers here can take from them lessons of hope and resilience applicable to the personal and political struggles they are engaged in.

Dorian Blueː During Winter Term, I always feel a certain degree of melancholy. The rain pounds down, the clouds crowd me in. Though, it is also a time of renewal, where I can spend my hours inside and ponder. Recently, I’ve continued my meditations on queerness and vampires, with my piece about AMC’s Interview With the Vampire and the way it navigates the despair, yet freedom, offered by an eternal life. The frustrating politics of campus are on my mind as well, with the recent situation with ASUO cutting NASU’s budget. Much healing is needed, especially as the world around us continues to fall into a state of distressing violence.

Brigham B.H: This is my first term with The Student Insurgent, and it’s been filled with nothing but hope for me as a writer. Looking at our behavior as a society, particularly as young people, in response to government action within news and social media is crucial to the way we read the news. My piece is centered on not-so-free press, and the perspective people must have moving forward to filter through sprawling propaganda as it becomes a daily occurrence. As much as some media outlets attempt to push us to a place of despair and desperation, a collective sense of hope must be established as a response to the oppression of our right to consume information.

River: the despair comes easy, easy like the leaves fall like the police kill like it was born within or maybe we were just born into it. and the hope, in its intriguing colors, taunts, feels or looks out of reach most hours of most days like meeting the beach before sunset, in winter, when the days are too short and we wrestle with worth, with forgiveness. but then, the beach, beyond the fog; in the sun, like a dark shell was shed and even if only briefly, there’s so much love and meaning in this eternal, fleeting, moment. and i think, drunkenly hopeful, everything that felt never worth it, was all so we could be right here and hold feelings as deep as i imagine the ocean to sink into earth.

haze: i was very excited when we decided that the theme for this issue would be despair and hope—i had a really great idea for a written piece, and i couldn’t wait to see what everyone had to contribute and piece this zine together. then, the depression hit, harder than it has in a long time. for three weeks i struggled to even get out of bed, and of course i never got around to writing my submission. and i wasn’t alone—the state of the world right now is not conducive to good mental health. but we live in a beautiful world. an evening two weeks ago, i left my house just after sunset, feeling miserable, and i saw a crocus—my first this spring. that single flower had a profound impact on me, and i ended up getting up the next morning and going to class. every year after the coldest, darkest winter, these flowers come back, heralding the return of the sun, of the spring, of hope. and so must we.

Rosie/Misandry: It sounds corny but it’s true that life cannot be beautiful if it isn’t also filled with despair. Despair is a difficult but necessary part of the human experience. We cannot have hope without despair, we cannot have happiness without despair, we cannot exist without despair. Like a rainbow after the storm, the joy that comes after the hardships is what makes humanity so complexly beautiful.

Joe Hill: The critical essence of revolutionary politics is the act of struggle against what seems like impossible odds. Against the ever-more engorged forces of capital, the task of reclaiming our humanity seems to become ever dimmed. However, do not let go of hope! Behind us stand a hundred generations who have fought for our emancipation. It is their legacy which we inherit, and it is their soul which still burns brightly in our movement. What was their cause is now our own: liberation. Let us keep fighting the good fight, and regain the dignity we all deserve!

My Kingdom For a Horse

Matthew Phongam — Wed, 01 Feb 2023 00:00:00 -0800

Author’s note: Matt is a Sag sun with a cap moon and rising in cancer.

By most reputable accounts, 2022 was the hottest year in human history, on pattern with climate trends since the turn of the century. The uncomfortable truth is that we have moved past the point of preventing a climate disaster, just preventing a more catastrophic climate disaster than the one unfolding before us. Property is no longer billed as ‘climate-friendly’ and now billed as ‘climate-resilient.’ World governments bicker over budgets and who has the best ideas, a contest of egos and not a synthesis of solutions that is meant to save the people they have been (not always fairly) elected to preside over. It’s a large-scale issue that not a lot of us want to acknowledge, we all swipe away the headlines and breaking news hoping somebody else will do something about it. We — on an atomic, individual scale — are powerless to stop the Earth’s death. No amount of electric bikes, going vegan, or recycling our plastics is going to matter to politicians and capitalists who are banking on the rest of us dying while they are in possession of resources. In the game of climate disaster, there exists winners and losers. Westerners almost never want to acknowledge their consumption habits have consequences, or that their cute pet cat who loves treats and cuddles could decimate a bird population if it wanted to, something that happens often.

The negativity doesn’t stop, climate is just one global issue on a declining planet. Scaled up to the largest metric possible, it doesn’t account for every nation’s specific problems. This includes the energy crisis of Europe, the opiate epidemic of North America, and the lack of refrigeration in African countries that ruins an unthinkable amount of food. Look at us, putting figures and statistics on something everyone needs to live. These numbers are almost never good news and just tell us how fucked the situation is. We’ve traded humanity for capital gains and profitable properties, it is not how it was meant to be; it was how the global economy was designed to work, with more winners and more losers. Economics can be described as ‘the study of scarcity’, but ‘scarcity’ can be a relative term, and that makes us have different working definitions of a lot of things. We have a scarcity of coffee in North America because it is not grown here, however the US is the number one importer of coffee in the world. The average North American doesn’t have a sense of that scarcity or of the coffee harvesters’ life. I win because I’m a citizen of NA and just have to swipe a card to get my coffee, and they lose because the ethics and labor rights situation of global scale trade are morally bankrupt and just fucked in general. This statement co-exists with the statement ‘we are both victims.’ Like ‘scarcity, the victimhood is relative.

So, what is left for us? We get to watch the Great American Experiment fail right before us with no backup plan. When the last precinct is burned, the last oil field bled dry, and the last billionaire has flown off into the cosmos, all we can do is turn to each other and acknowledge that we have to cooperate if we are to survive. It will be difficult, we will argue with each other, we’ll spend time reading theory and doing the practice to see what works and what doesn’t, we’ll live with contrarians and haters for better or worse. It is not really something anybody wants to see happen, we want a static lifestyle where our ideas aren’t challenged too hard, but we still get to feel good about our diversity, inclusion, and intersectionality.

‘Despair’ is our everyday; every news story is too depressing to acknowledge, every overdose on the street a failure. Most of us would rather live in ignorance than see the country our ancestors worked, looted, lied, committed genocide, and enslaved others to build is failing just about everyone. Maybe America falling can be accredited to karma, maybe the country is just evil and was something that needed to be destroyed. Still, we live on in this land that has blood stains in the soil and chemicals in the water, with each other, so hopefully we choose each other and don’t die bitter with remorse that we didn’t choose each other.

Americans really cling to this idea of ‘scarcity’ and that ‘you have that so I/We/They can’t have that’ mentality that we invented along with money and resources. But hope and good faith are not something there is a finite, worldly supply of– we can make as much of it in our heads as we please and give it out until we get exhausted from it. It sounds trite and maybe even superficial and unrealistic, something you’d feel from finishing a Final Fantasy game before moving on to the next video game, but it’s true. It sounds trite because we were imparted with mentalities and attitude to keep late-stage capitalism alive, and sometimes we just cannot conceive another way of being or operating the world.

I honestly hope reading this made you depressed. I got depressed thinking of what to say. I love my convenience and first world products like you do. I enjoy waking up every morning knowing I have food to eat and a machine to wash my clothes and keep my food fresh, we all do. As we should. We should live by sustainable standards that keep us alive and happy, de facto or (begrudgingly) de jure. Is the goal not to uplift everyone? I hope you sunk into this ‘despair’ The Insurgent was going for, but now I want you to take that energy and put it towards agency and praxis towards hope. The media often reports what’s wrong with the world, and good news is something one must seek out, but all you have to do is ask. But the fact there is any good news at all is worth knowing. We pay money to have a cycle of breaking news that gives the impression that all our problems are worse than they really are, and that we have no agency over the actions of others. Someone once told me ‘read the news enough and you’ll think the world is ending’. So know when to close the NPR or NYT app. The barrier to entry is minimal. Listen to people who don’t look or think like you, take what they have to say into consideration, and let yourself learn and grow from it. All you have to do is listen and think about anything substantial that they had to say. I hope it sticks with you and you remember it when life seems like it’s good. You don’t have to solve every issue all in one go, you just have to be able to say you chose hope when most of what was there was a feeling of despair. Yes, the long term climate situation looks bleak. No, we don’t have to passively watch it happen. Learn who is in your community, take into account what they have to say, have constructive discourse and dialogue, and wonder if maybe the circumstances of your existence are something the world does or does not need. Even if others don’t live by your example or attitude, you’ll live knowing you lived your truth. It is a process of inward reflection and outward projection that we’ll never stop doing.

Native American Student Union Budget Hearing

Dorian Blue — Wed, 01 Feb 2023 00:00:00 -0800

On January 17th, the ASUO meeting for NASU’s budget was packed to the gills. The tension was palpable; more and more people squeezed in and the ASUO committee members sat aligned at their table and firmly asked no one in the room to stand behind them, even as space dwindled. As the meeting convened, the NASU members sat across from the ASUO budget leadership. The ASUO Chair outlined that the meeting was closed to public comment and any filming.

During COVID, like many groups on campus, NASU dealt with disruption and rocky transitions in leadership. This resulted in them missing a budget deadline in the spring and NASU explained that they lacked the support they needed for budget guidance.

Megan Van Pelt, one of NASU’s co-directors, described the actions of ASUO as spitting in their elders’ faces. NASU is an essential campus resource to indigenous students at UO and for so-called Oregon’s indigenous communities in general. “We need the budget for the generations ahead of us.”

Indigenous students are underrepresented at UO, with recent demographics counts putting them at 0.6% of the student body. Depriving an already constantly marginalized circle of students of resources they need over a simple bureaucratic deadline is shameful. Two of the many issues NASU faces with a lowered budget is funding for the Indigenous Women’s Wellness program as well as the Mother’s Day Powwow, which is the longest running student-led powwow in so-called Oregon. It is incredibly arrogant that UO uses NASU and the events at Many Nations Longhouse to market and elevate the university, but continually disrespects the needs and survival of indigenous students.

After the tumult of the meeting, steeped in the typical bureaucratic jargon, the only reprieve rousing speeches from NASU leaders, ASUO announced that they would not raise NASU’s budget for this year. While explaining this decision, several trembling ASUO members repeated that the budget verdict had ultimately been made by their predecessors. It’s a fair point to bring up once, but not an excuse. They also claimed that if they gave NASU their full budget over other organizations in a similar budget situation as them, it would be biased. However, ASUO agreed to fund the Mother’s Day Powwow in whole (one of the largest and most significant events put on by NASU yearly) with the caveat that NASU drop all other line items. They also recommended NASU go to the ASUO surplus fund, which still has a large sum of money, due to the lack of in-person events held during COVID.

It is inspiring to see students mobilize and take up space in response to the undermining of NASU needs but it is unlikely that this will be the last time the wellbeing of minority students are disregarded by this extremely wealthy institution. We wish NASU luck in continuing to endure the settler-colonial ideologies of this university (and beyond) that refuses to relinquish dominance and funding, and much healing in their upcoming events.

Taking Up New Tactics: I Grow Tired, But Dare Not Fall Asleep

J. Ellis — Wed, 01 Feb 2023 00:00:00 -0800

The saying “print is dead” has been hanging over my head for the entire duration of my time with the Insurgent. I walk around campus and town trying to offload our thousands of printed copies, stocking the newsstands, and asking passerby “hi, would you like a free copy of The Student Insurgent?” Nine times out of ten I’m met with a stern no, untouched stacks on racks, or worse yet, vandalized ones. Sometimes I try a simpler approach, “hi, do you like to read?” Once I was met with a chorus of “no’s” so demoralizing I began to wonder why bother at all. I’m kept awake at night imagining our hard work lining the enclosure of some townie’s pet guinea pig.

We are facing a crisis of apathy on the University of Oregon campus. Its origins are innumerable, and beyond the scope of this article. Besides, it would just come off like a list of complaints anyway. I signed up for this, no? I’m locked into this institution, whether I like it or not. In the last four years I’ve come to the defeated realization that perhaps the university is not the setting for real change. The ephemerality of the student body, the legacy of capitalistic white supremacy inherent to these institutions, and the bureaucratic red tape such an institution depends upon, all make meaningful organizing/resistance unsustainable in such a setting. Its policies and practices are at the mercy of whoever’s in charge, and the direction of the university has never been in the hands of the people, its students. No, no. Instead, the direction of higher ed in this country is left in the hands of bureaucrats more versed in economics than education. Such a model robs education of its potential for empowerment, as the University is fundamentally a system designed to reproduce the next generation of the ruling class. It often feels like the Insurgent’s fight against this has been fruitless at its best, self-destructive at its worst.

That’s not to say what we’re trying to do is insignificant or meaningless. There’s a Castro quote that goes “the weapon of today is not guns but consciousness,” and for this reason alternative media is a fundamental part of any movement. Look to the Black Panther newspaper, or the tabloid-toting Trotskyists that troll campus, to your beloved local distro, or the Rojava meme-makers. In a media saturated society, the use of media is an ideological survival strategy. But our activism can only go as far as our attention spans. Where do we turn when we tire of writing, are exhausted by reading? Can there be destruction without creation?

Despite the frequent bouts of despair I’ve encountered in this endeavor, my belief in the importance of radical media has never wavered. I’ve never questioned the importance of our intentions, only the efficacy of our impact. After all, as we continue to engage with such blatant corruption as enrolled members of the university system, is it not our responsibility to critique it? As students, and as activists, we have the responsibility to turn our education against itself by observing and CALLING OUT the structures of oppression we learn about in class at play in our own educational system. Publications like The Insurgent are necessary for this reason.

As Dr. Bones writes in “The Rise of the Radical Reporter,” writing, reporting, and journalism are “literal weapons we need to employ to ensure the field of affinity expands.” We need people willing to take up aliases and create a platform that rejects absolute power.

The former editor in chief for the Insurgent on my first assignment ever all those years ago, a punk benefit-show review/interview, handed me (already stoned as fuck) two beers and said some words I’ll never forget: “Go Gonzo, kid.” And so I stumbled up to the band and took fifteen minutes of their time to slur out questions about the intersection of environmental justice and punk music. In the spirit of that moment that started it all, allow me to invoke a Hunter S. Thompson quote:

“There are a lot of ways to practice the art of journalism, and one of them is to use your art like a hammer to destroy the right people — who are almost always your enemies, for one reason or another, and who usually deserve to be crippled, because they are wrong. This is a dangerous notion, and very few professional journalists will endorse it — calling it ‘vengeful’ and ‘primitive’ and ‘perverse’ regardless of how often they might do the same thing themselves. ‘That kind of stuff is opinion,’ they say, ‘and the reader is cheated if it’s not labelled as opinion.’ Well, maybe so. Maybe Tom Paine cheated his readers and Mark Twain was a devious fraud with no morals at all who used journalism for his own foul ends….In my case, using what politely might be called ‘advocacy journalism,’ I’ve used reporting as a weapon to affect political situations that bear down on my environment.”

I think I’ve clung to the Insurgent so closely because I’ve always seen this potential power within it. Its very existence is a form of protest on this campus.

Contrary to the university’s best efforts against it, I’ve learned a lot in my time here. That is probably more a product of aging and experience more than the number of credits I’ve completed. As I prepare to move on from my invested involvement at the Insurgent and ROAR, I have just a few words of wisdom.

Don’t ever be fooled: the administration is not on your side. “Viewpoint neutrality” is a joke. We threaten their interests, and they threaten ours.
Bare minimum: keep the prison project going at all costs. This is the audience we have the largest reach in, and is probably the most tangible impact we have as an organization. Never neglect our allies and accomplices inside.
Stay punk: don’t give into myths of professionalism. EmbrAce typoss & reject formality !
Keep your fingers on the pulse: maintain a global and local scope to issues. Pay special attention to the things mainstream media isn’t talking about. Stop trying to form new hot takes on electoral politics. There is nothing to say about Donald Trump that hasn’t already been said. For the love of Gods, talk about Yemen, Palestine, Peru, Iran, or anything else instead. The more priority we give to the happenings in the imperial core the more power we grant it. That said, never lose sight of what’s directly around you. The press is valuable for its function as a watchdog. Watch for corruption and authoritarianism on a local scale.
Consensus: The Insurgent was once too autocratic for its own good. Whatever capacity may be, ensure the distribution of labor becomes even more equitable over time. It may seem easier to have the bulk of responsibility fall under one person, but believe me, it’s not.

For months, I’ve struggled to find the words to articulate my feelings about finally moving on from the Insurgent. What could I possibly say to close such an intense chapter of my life? How do you say goodbye to passions that no longer serve you? Fuck, what if all the effort I put in to keep this sinking ship afloat is all in vain? Hah, it’s not like my friends ever read any of the shit I wrote anyway. Alas, woe is me. Just do your best, that’s all I’ve been doing. If this thing is meant to be, it will. For what feels like the first time in a long time, I have hope in the Insurgent beyond my time with it. As for me, I’ll see you on the streets instead, comrades.

The Dark Gift of Gay Vampires

Dorian Blue — Wed, 01 Feb 2023 00:00:00 -0800

The Interview With The Vampire TV show, an adaption of the 1976 book of the same name, debuted its first season on Oct 2nd. It dives into the fraught relationship between the two leads, Lestat and Louis, and their time living together in the jazz age of New Orleans. It is twisted and devastatingly beautiful, bringing the gothic genre back in full swing. Louis sits in a penthouse in the modern day, recounting the events of the past in a poetic and melancholic narration to a cynical journalist named Daniel Molloy, who had originally interviewed him fifty years before. Louis tells Molloy to “let the tale seduce you—just as I was seduced.”

It is an adaptation in the truest sense. The original book was set in the 18th century Antebellum south, in which Louis was a plantation owner who gave his interview to a reporter in the 1970s, which was then the present day. In the show, the story is set in the 1910s through 1940s. Louis is a Black Creole man who owns brothels. His life is full of posturing and lies as he exists as Black, Catholic, and deeply closested in the Jim Crow-era South, which tortures him. He has to provide for his family, even as they know and disapprove of the illicit places his money comes from.

His life is a series of performances; in each aspect of it, he has to hide an important part of himself to fulfill the roles set for him. By becoming a vampire, he hopes to gain true control for the first time. “Take a Black man in America. Make him a vampire. Fuck with that vampire and see what comes of it.”

The changes made exemplify the heart and soul of the story. The characters are the most vivid versions of themselves that I’ve ever seen on screen.

Interview with the Vampire is regarded as both a gothic masterpiece and homoerotically charged. Any discerning queer person can tell from Louis’ spiteful recounting of Lestat that they were lovers, but for many straight readers, it went over their heads. All ambiguity is cleared in the second book, when Lestat, the narrator, describes how he fell “fatally in love with Louis” and in the modern day epilogue, they reunite and kiss.

The show masterfully takes the subtext of the first book and more overt themes of the later books, brewing it into direct text. Louis described Lestat by saying “he was my murderer, my mentor, my lover, and my maker.”

Instead of engaging in the tedious “will they won’t they” that a lot of media does with queer pairings, Interview delves deep into Lestat and Louis’ relationship; its shining moments and many shortcomings.

As Lestat professes his love to Louis on the altar of church, stroking his cheek and telling him, “I send my love to you and you send it back round to me,” violence and carnage surrounds them. They are hopelessly drawn together, but will also never truly understand each other.

As the episodes progress, the show becomes a tale that is more and more twisted. It draws the viewer in with its chilling depictions of intimate partner violence, taken to the extreme with vampire powers. That is followed up by love bombing, false promises, and a family dynamic so fucked up Freud would have a field day.

Interview With the Vampire is campy, viscerally horrifying, and stunningly beautiful, all with the backdrop of New Orleans. What more could you ask for?

Art by Stella

The Despair Playlist

The Student Insurgent — Wed, 01 Feb 2023 00:00:00 -0800

Feeling too hopeful? Need music to help flip the bird to whatever oppresses you, or just wallow in apathy? Look no further than this playlist! Curated by the wider Insurgent collective for your listening (dis)pleasure.

Bela Legousi’s Dead — Bauhaus
PANIC ATTACK — Pussy Riot
Comfortably Numb — Pink Floyd
Working for the Knife— Mitski
When The Going Gets Dark— Quasi
The Mad Man’s Laughter— Tsegue Maryam Guebrou
Frail and Bedazzled—The Smashing Pumpkins
God Save the Queen — Sex Pistols
Smells Like Teen Spirit (Radio Edit) — Patti Smith
Судно — Молчат Дома (Molchat Doma)
Killing In The Name — Rage Against The Machine
Miss the Rage — Mario Judah
Sea Slug — Seabiscuit
Restless — Annie’s Friend, Silas Haun & Lucinda Drake
Much Finer — Le Tigre
Lounge Act — EarthTing, Alien Cake Music
Holy Shit — Father John Misty
Don’t shoot — Shea Diamond
City of angels — The Distillers
Strangelove — Depeche Mode
Night Shift — Siouxsie and the Banshees
STFU! — Rina Sawayama
Army of Me — Bjork
Whatever— NOOGY
Working for the Government — Buffy Sainte-Marie
Buried in the Woods — meth.
Dress Rehearsal Rag — Leonard Cohen
Незнакомая Сила — Utro
Not Too Amused — Sebadoh
Houses in Motion — Talking Heads
Mentira — Manu Chao
Human Sadness — The Voidz
Ain’t No Sunshine — Bill Withers
No — Nicolas Jaar
El Otro Chile — Portavoz, Stailok
Desaparecidos — Orishas
Mladic — Godspeed You! Black Emperor
Disintegration — The Cure
Grounded — Pavement
Else — Built to Spill
Soup is Good Food — Dead Kennedys
There, There — Radiohead
black stacey dash — JPEGMAFIA
Gnaw — Alex G
Cause = Time — Broken Social Scene
Letter to Hermione — David Bowie
Untitled — Interpol
not a lot, just forever — Adrianne Lenker
Casket Pretty — Noname
Polly — Moses Sumney
Motion Sickness — Phoebe Bridgers
Blood & Innocence — Yves Tumor
No Control — WILLOW
MENTHOL* — Jean Dawson, Mac DeMarco
Construção — Chico Buarque
Line of Sight — ODESZA
Big Bird — AJJ
Words — Low
New Slang — The Shins
Victim — Bladee
Heaven — Tropical Fuck Storm
Shove — L7
The Law of Asbestos — Ashenspire
Roman Candle — Elliott Smith
Bloodhail — Have A Nice Life
The Downfall of Us All — A Day to Remember
I Laugh When I’m With Friends But Sad When I’m Alone — 070 Shake

Need something more hopeful? Check out the other playlist.

The Hope Playlist

The Student Insurgent — Wed, 01 Feb 2023 00:00:00 -0800

Feeling utterly deflated? Need music to help you remember why life’s worth living, or just uplift you? Here’s The Student Insurgent’s antidote to the other playlist.

South Side of the Sky — Yes
Build a Fire — Pile
Song 33 — Noname
Help Me — Mic Crenshaw, Jana Crenshaw
Movimiento Social El Deseo — Sara Hebe
Utopian Futures — Kimya Dawson
Here Comes The Sun — The Beatles
The Times They Are A-Changin’ — Bob Dylan
Sweet But Bitter Life — Possessed by Paul James
New Beginning — Tracy Chapman
You Must Believe in Spring and Love — Abbey Lincoln
Strength — Moonchild
Feeling Good — Nina Simone
Brake Up Song — Foraging and the Rattling Bones
Oh Well, We’ll Win — Skating Polly
Let the Flames Begin — Paramore
Phenomenon — ODIE
It’s a Good Day (to fight the system) — Shungudzo
Drama — Erykah Badu
Alright — Kendrick Lamar
Escribo Rap Con R De Revolución — Portavoz, Cidtronyck
Which Will — Nick Drake
Bodhyanga — Alvan, Velvet
Years — Amelia Curran
All Is Full of Love — Bjork
El Amor — KeTeKalles
Technicolor — Montaigne
I Will Survive — Gloria Gaynor
Don’t Give Up — Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush
Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger — Daft Punk
Express Yourself — Madonna
We Are The Champions — Queen
Imagine — John Lennon
Ain’t No Mountain High Enough — Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell
Three Little Birds — Bob Marley and the Wailers
I Won’t Back Down — Tom Petty
What a Wonderful World — Louis Armstrong
Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life — Monty Python
We Are the World — Michael Jackson
Over The Rainbow — Israel Kamakawiwo‘ole
We Shall Overcome — Joan Baez
Bridge over Troubled Water — Simon and Garfunkel
Don’t Stop — Fleetwood Mac
Smile — Nat King Cole
Lovely Day — Bill Withers
Yearn — Yvette Young
Mr. Blue Sky — ELO
Wind of Change — The Scorpions
Beautiful Day — U2
Stand by Me — Ben E. King
Coast — Gone Gone Beyond
The Long Run — BLOOM, ELIH
Truth — Alex Ebert
Chill Out (Things Gonna Change) — John Lee Hooker
Vivir mi Vida — Marc Anthony
Iswegh Attay — Tinariwen, Kyp Malone
La Vida Es Un Carnaval — Celia Cruz
Todo Cambia — Mercedes Sosa
Hasta la Raíz — Natalia Lafourcade
Don’t Bring Me Down — Electric Light Orchestra
Seeds of Freedom — Manu Chao
Zamba de Mi Esperanza — Jorge Cafrune
Dancing in the Moonlight — King Harvest
Degg Gui — Cheikh Lô
Claridad — Muerdo
Eye of the Tiger — Survivor
Comfortable — Mick Jenkins, Noname
Lessons From My Mistakes…but I Lost Your Number — Liv.e
Pretty World — Lisa Ono
Flowerboys — Saint Ivory
Simple Things — Minnie Riperton
Sweet Time — Raveena
Freedom Is Free — Chicano Batman
Shine — Cleo Sol
NÜ REVOLUTION — Les Nubians
Link — Tierra Whack
Poetry — The RH Factor, Q-Tip, Erykah Badu
Heal — Pip Millett
Prayer — Ali Dineen
We Got to Have Peace — Curtis Mayfield
Gajendra — WILLOW, Jahnavi Harrison
Rainforest — Noname
Lean on Me — Bill Withers
Over the Rainbow — Israel Kamakawiwoʻole
Get Up, Stand Up — Bob Marley & The Wailers
One Love — Bob Marley
Young Love — Cleo Sol
Revolution (Pts. 1 and 2) — Nina Simone
Under Pressure — Queen (feat. David Bowie)
Home Ft. Jana Crenshaw and Mama C — Mic Crenshaw, Jana Crenshaw, Mama C
Free Em All — Mic Crenshaw, David Rovics, Opium Sabbah
I Sing Just To Know That I’m Alive — Nina Simone
Floating — Raveena, Hope Tala
With a Little Help From My Friends — The Beatles
Alright — Kitty Craft
Mirage — Chris Keys, Quelle Chris, Earl Sweatshirt, Denmark Vessey, Merrill Garbus, Big Sen
Antifascista — ZSK
Let’s Lynch the Landlord — Dead Kennedys
Livin’ on a Prayer — Bon Jovi
Not Afraid — Eminem
Lovey Day — Alt J
Down Bad — Dreamville, JID, Bas, J. Cole, EARTHGANG, Young Nudy
Spinal Tap — Okay Kaya, deem spencer, Michael Wolever
Clint Eastwood - Ed Case / Sweetie Irie Refix — Gorillaz
Let the Rhythm Just — The Polish Ambassador, Mr. Lif, Ayla Nereo
Don’t Stop Believing — Journey

The Subtleties of American Propaganda

Brigham — Wed, 01 Feb 2023 00:00:00 -0800

Social media, news media, and advertisements comprise many of the images we see daily, but many people simply accept this virtual reality instead of questioning its existence. Modern man has been moved to look through windows into many detached experiences through the mediums of social media and news that no other generation has been subjected to. The structure of this intake of information has led to a new way of consuming and producing news. Scrolling through Twitter, Facebook or TikTok for fifteen minutes could present you with pictures from a NASA expedition to a porn ad, a cute puppy video to one about the climate crisis, or an old family photo to a debate over gun control between your cousin and uncle.

Our indifference in disregarding each post for the next has distorted the perception of which stories we inherently value over others. These platforms have developed a massive audience, unprecedented throughout the course of human history, and our government has taken advantage of this. The CIA has admitted that it has influence in a range of sources within the sphere of news media, and recent reforms of the National Defense Authorization Act have made it legal to produce domestic propaganda for US citizens’ consumption (Adl-Tabatabai & Kelley). The collective use of social media has been weaponized against its users to promote mass-consumerism and retain the status quo. Nationalist propaganda has been one of, if not the most vital weapon at the disposal of the American government, and social media is their atomic bomb.

Throughout the 20th Century journalists dominated the news industry and were relied upon for deciphering the worth of each story. They condensed the massive amounts of information in their possession into the most worthwhile for their readers and viewers. There was much less freedom in the hands of the public regarding what information they were exposed to in terms of access. Today, the average person can open their smartphone and find articles about seemingly any topic of their choosing, and social media algorithms decide which stories are worth showing to the individual. On the surface this seems like a massive improvement in reporting and news coverage, but data analysts, psychologists, and engineers are aiming to simply keep you engaged with their platform. They have developed reward systems that affect our brain chemistry in a way that keeps us coming back for more. The actions we take and thoughts we express online seem to do more than tangible work or activism does, which disillusions us into deriving more self-worth and a larger sense of commitment to our virtual lives.

This phenomena of escapism— accepting one’s dismal real-life existence for a favorable online presence— is an incredibly manipulative disbursement of a complacent, consumerist attitude. We are pushed to buy faddish product after faddish product as a solution to the problems we are told we have by businesses that simply care about making a profit. We are told to model our lives off successful people who cater their lives to us as an unattainable playlist of their best moments. The media-induced romanticism we attribute to our lives is the largest tool of our suppressive government. The spectacle-oriented society that has come to fruition is unsustainable, but more importantly, it’s incredibly dangerous.

News outlets have an ethical commitment to providing accurate stories without misleading the public, but they are also a business. As more sources have arisen since the early 2000s, especially on TV and the internet, these companies have had to fight to retain and grow their audiences. Competing for viewers creates a conflict of interest between transparent coverage of a story and theatrical portrayals of the same story. There is a daily battle for the biggest headline which is disregarded the following day by its replacement. This way of taking in knowledge on social media does not allow for critical thinking or promote reading comprehension, but rather looks to deliver a surplus of information as efficiently as possible, almost like a fast-food restaurant for journalism. We all know that fast-food is lacking in its substance, but convenience trumps the content, so we choose to be ignorant for the sake of time. This ignorance slowly develops into a habit of no longer thinking about the prior point. The same situation has transpired with the consumption of information, as people actively choose to get as much information as they can without lingering on any single story for too long. Our willingness to conform to this way of life is suppressing our ability to think freely. It is numbing our awareness to the true phenomena occurring around us and is an active concession of our free-will.

The comment systems attached to these posts further limit free thought and create a herd mentality of non-critical thinking. Groups of isolated individuals stuck in the echo-chamber of social media algorithms and comment sections have been trapped in dangerous ideologies from the likes of Ben Shapiro, Stephen Crowder, and Jordan Peterson, among others. Similarly, viewers of FOX News, CNN, and other mainstream news channels have been trapped in their own uncritical ways of thought, as their ideas are never under scrutiny, and the ideas they possess are not their own. Being isolated in thought is limiting for the individual as well as a collective society.

The increased integration of identity politics over the last eight years or so has also damaged collective dialogue. People have begun attributing their identity to their ideology, and as a result, emotionally charged conversations take up the most airtime, while rational debate has taken a backseat role in political commentary. We are being actively divided into voting demographics and statistics for politicians to increase their power at the hands of addictive applications. We are lulled into a false sense of security through constant affirmation and a relinquishment of free-thought. It’s comforting to simply watch someone else think about and analyze the issues you find important, but it resembles a dictatorial way of calling people to act and turns the audience into mindless consumers of rhetoric.

The world has shrunk to fit in our pockets, and the performances we put on feel like we’re contributing to something, when in reality we’re falling into the hands of the oppressive individuals and institutions that seek our return to the seemingly important digital world. It’s critical that we increase our awareness of the blatant mass manipulation occurring everyday in the palm of our hands. Social media can be used as a tool towards progress, and the potential for good is just as large as the potential for bad. We need to use our virtual canvases to educate, socialize, and promote dialogue with others rather than submitting ourselves to the wants and needs of social media developers and politicians.

Works Cited

Adl-Tabatabai, Sean. “CIA Admit They Have Infiltrated Every Mainstream Media Outlet in America.” News Punch, 3 May 2021, https://newspunch.com/cia-infiltrated-mainstream-media/.

Kelley, Michael B. “The NDAA Legalizes the Use of Propaganda on the US Public.” Business Insider, Business Insider, 21 May 2012, https://www.businessinsider.com/ndaa-legalizes-propaganda-2012-5.

Weaving Hope: Resistance and Reexistence in Indigenous Colombia

Serbal Vidrio — Wed, 01 Feb 2023 00:00:00 -0800

Amid the undulating shaman’s song and the gently falling rain pattering on the roof of the ceremonial roundhouse, I fell back on the blankets spread over the floor and wrapped myself in the folds of my poncho—blue, white, black, and red in the traditional Kamëntsá pattern.

“Paint, yagecito, cure, heal, bless, protect, yagecito,” intoned the shaman as I closed my eyes. Soon came the visions, then the purging, then the shaman’s gentle words as he leaned over me and cleansed my body of malevolent spirits. My habitual doubts and anxieties dissolved. Into that space of healing entered an unfamiliar feeling: a sense of place and belonging. I knew then that I had found a lifelong connection to the Sibundoy Valley and the relationships I had forged there. I felt myself engaged in a project truly meaningful, not only academically and professionally but also in deeply human terms. I had come to the Sibundoy Valley to live among the Kamëntsá for the sake of my anthropology honors thesis, but I left it as more than just a detached researcher. Spending two months among the Kamëntsá was a rite of passage that taught me much about the movement from despair to hope.

Like all Indigenous peoples in what we now call the Americas, the Kamëntsá, one of two Indigenous groups to inhabit the Sibundoy Valley of southwest Colombia since time immemorial, were and continue to be victims of territorial, cultural, and sociopolitical dispossession. The Sibundoy Valley, a lush and verdant basin situated between the Andean highlands to the west and the Amazonian lowlands to the east, was first “opened” to colonization and settlement at the turn of the 20th century, when Capuchin missionaries built roads into the valley with Indigenous forced labor under the auspices of the Colombian state. The following seventy years of quasi-feudal Capuchin rule saw the Kamëntsá stripped of much of their ancestral territory, language, and cultural identity. Even since the Capuchins left in 1970, the valley has undergone continued settlement and land theft at the hands of non-Indigenous colonizers from the rest of Colombia, while casual racism and discrimination is still an everyday occurrence today. And yet, despite the challenges—and, it bears repeating, like all Indigenous peoples of the Americas—through creative and strategic resistance and adaptation, the Kamëntsá have survived the traumas of colonialism and guaranteed their continued existence as a vital, vibrant, and autonomous people. Much still, however, remains to be done.

The Kamëntsá intuitively understand, based on a cultural knowledge system built up through the experience of millennia spent inhabiting their special corner of the ecologically superdiverse Andes-Amazon piedmont, that actions have consequences. For thousands of years they and other Indigenous populations inhabited the relational fabric of their territories respectfully and sustainably. Only in the past several centuries, especially since the advent of industrial capitalism and its all-consuming need for the natural abundance of their ecosystems—what industrialists and technocrats term “natural resources”—has nature’s delicate equilibrium been thrown out of balance. The old Capuchin road along which missionaries and settlers once entered the Sibundoy Valley to strip the Kamëntsá of their culture and dispossess them of their land has long since been overtaken by the jungle—nature always reclaims its own—but new roads, like the one locally known as the “Trampoline of Death” due to its towering death toll, continue to allow settlers, developers, and agents of the state to infiltrate and develop settler-colonial and extractive projects on the territory that the Kamëntsá are fighting to reclaim.

Kamëntsá activists and land defenders have made some important gains, but the struggle continues. As in all Indigenous communities in Colombia and beyond, fighting for environmental rights and social justice is a risky prospect; Colombia was the most dangerous country in the world for environmental activists in 2021, and several among the Kamëntsá have been assassinated in recent years, likely by hitmen hired by the various extractive business interests (both legal and illegal) present in the Sibundoy Valley. Constructing autonomy and securing the future of their culture and community is, like the insidious colonial projects that the Kamëntsá are resisting, a continuous and iterative process.

So when the shamans tell me that “water is life,” referring to the páramos, alpine wetland ecosystems that provide the bulk of Colombia’s drinking water but which are rapidly degrading under climate change, or speak of the communal hearth as “grandfather fire,” I listen up. Because despite centuries of colonization and decades of territorial and cultural pillaging, these notions rich with meaning are as resilient and resonant among the Kamëntsá as ever. They embed them in the tsömbiach, the pictographic woven belts that can be read like books and which are wrapped around infants to impart to them the wisdom of their mothers and grandmothers. They put these notions into embodied practice in their daily work in the jajañ, the gardens full of edible, magical, and medicinal plants which are repositories of traditional knowledge but which are under threat from the monoculture system brought by settlers. They keep these notions, like all the collective knowledge and values of Kamëntsá cosmology, alive in their language—whose future is threatened by Spanish hegemony. Armed with the wisdom of their ancestors and the strength and resolve of their youth, the Kamëntsá confront contemporary challenges with hope.

If you are interested in supporting the Kamëntsá community and buying an authentic bead bracelet straight from the hands of the artisans I work with, write me at rowang@uoregon.edu

Call to Save the Disability Studies Program!

J. Ellis — Sat, 01 Oct 2022 00:00:00 -0700

This fall term has been a time of uncertainty for faculty in the Disability Studies program. As the new university budget is being drafted, and as we search for a new university president, department heads are left scrambling to catch up to the University of Oregon’s intensifying plot of profitization and privatization.

Director of the Disability Studies minor, Betsy Wheeler, spoke with the Insurgent about the troubles her department is facing and their plans for action. If herself and colleagues do not succeed in bargaining with the university, the program and other minors like it risk being done away with entirely by next year.

According to Wheeler, Disability Studies “is a big and thriving minor but it is looking like it may shut down by the end of the year,” because the “College of Arts and Sciences [is] refusing to provide any support for this minor in particular.” This is a problem that persists across minors at UO.

Program directors get the short end of the stick under the current model of minor program management. Directing a minor is a lot of extra work added to being faculty, and directors are not awarded extra compensation for their efforts, per Wheeler, “What we’re asking for is for the person who directs the minor to teach one fewer courses per year, that’s called a course release. So that you’re basically not doing 120% of your job for the price of 100%.”

Disability Studies is more than coursework, too. As a minor, it is the only disability curriculum on campus and entails “an internship component: a requirement, where students are out working in the disability community all over Lane County. So there’s administering the internships and making relationships with community partners, [and] there’s also a kind of disability outreach and awareness and advocacy that we do. And I think right now there’s about 60 students in the minor who seem to value it a lot and it would be a real shame if it went away.”

The program fills a unique spot in university curriculum, so to stretch the division of labor and preserve the program, faculty have so far “divided up the tasks of directing the minor,” but this is unsustainable. Wheeler says that, “if we can’t advocate to the administration for the course release, [this would cost] about 15,000 dollars a year, we’ll shut down in the spring. We feel that disabled people are always being asked to educate the wider public for free. And we can’t do that.” Faculty in this role need lighter workloads or receive just compensation for the extra labor this role requires.

The university’s arrogance towards the needs of its staff and programs is painfully obvious in light of the $3 Billion donation from Connie and Steve Ballmer to found the Ballmer Institute, up in Portland. The Insurgent reported on this move last year, the Institute is the latest instance of philanthropic billionaires stringing our public university on their purse strings. From a liberal lens, the Institute’s intention appears to be pure; but the perspectives provided by disability scholarship are critical of the approach the Ballmer’s wish to instate. The Institute’s approach to childhood mental health and disabilities is one based on techniques like applied behavioral analysis that aim for compliance and repression of autistic self-expression rather than support, adaptation, and understanding. Ballmer branding obfuscates the harm professional interventions to conditions like autism cause members of the disability community (when adults with lived experience aren’t consulted about beneficial methods of education and therapy) and through veiling its ableism through PR buzzwords, like in this excerpt from the Ballmer website:

“Capitalizing on the synergies between workforce development and service delivery, new products will be studied thoroughly and disseminated quickly to respond to the urgent needs of children, adolescents, their families, and communities.”

This efficient, streamlined approach to mental health issues is in fact regressive and likely more harmful than helpful to the community it aims to work for. This is the same type of rhetoric organizations like Autism Speaks uses, in attempts to cure chronic mental and physical conditions rather than accommodate and normalize them. In further repression of disability justice frameworks on campus, the College of Education recently announced a new major in applied behavioral analysis, a move that Wheeler criticizes, “There’s really been no attention to the very strong critiques of applied behavioral analysis in the autism community, and that’s another place where disability studies can offer another perspective.”

Through these programs, the university is feigning to provide a needed service while ignoring the needs of preexisting ones. This is “part of a larger general trend of devaluing the labor of the people who work at UO, whether that’s faculty, or staff, and a kind of increasing centralization where things that are special and unique get less and less valued.” Disability Studies isn’t the only program facing these problems, this dilemma extends to all English department minors, Black Studies, Comic Studies, Food Studies, Global Health, and more.

What’s happened “is a kind of divide and conquer, where they’re telling different minor directors different things and we’ve all been engaged in this kind of silo strategy where we’ve been each advocating separately for the minors. We’re just starting to realize, oh, this is a general policy issue where we need to work together,” so in response to Admin’s unrealistic expectations, faculty are organizing a campaign to save the program. Here’s how the program’s Exec Board says you can help, start by being aware of UO’s hypocrisies:

UO Administration talks about diversity, equity, and inclusion, but won’t support a minor promoting race, gender, and disability justice.
UO Administration talks about career readiness, but won’t support a program with a consistent record of internship and job placements.
UO Administration talks about community-engaged learning, but won’t support a program that embeds students in dozens of local nonprofits and schools.
UO Administration talks about interdisciplinary scholarship, but won’t support a minor with students from 18 majors across all schools and colleges of the University and courses from 15 different departments.
UO Administration talks about fostering the next generation of transformational leaders and informed global citizens, but ignores the ideals and leadership goals of the 60+ students in the DS Minor and the hundreds of students who connect powerfully with our always-full classes.
UO Administration talks about the importance of young people’s mental health and wellness, but won’t support a major hub of community and knowledge for students with lived experience of body and mind diversity.
UO Administration talks about the need to educate students for a post-pandemic society that responds flexibly to shifting states of health, but won’t support the field best equipped to provide that education.
Tell UO to put action behind its words.
Stay in the loop to take action.
Share your story: let the Administration know what Disability Studies means to you.

“CAS doesn’t value diversity when it expects “diverse” faculty to foster equity and inclusion as an extracurricular activity. The Disability Studies Minor is only one of many UO interdisciplinary, community-based education initiatives that do the heavy lifting of the university’s diversity work with near-zero support. With your help, we’ll pressure the UO Administration to put action behind its talk of equality, wellness, career readiness, and transformational leadership.” — Disability Studies Executive Board.

See here for more information.

Community Successfully Defends Families From Fascist Threat Outside Drag Queen Story Time

Solidarity News — Sat, 01 Oct 2022 00:00:00 -0700

Syndicated with Solidarity News

Around 50 right-wingers ascended to Old Nick’s to intimidate a drag queen story time performance and the greater queer community on Sunday, Oct. 23. This came after right-wing provocateurs and media spread lies and misinformation across social media outlets and in national media publications about Vanellope, an 11 year-old that was performing that day. While there were fascists hailing from across the region, over 200 members of the queer community and its accomplices successfully defended the area.

Noted right-wing internet personality, fascist collaborator, and known fabulist Andy Ngo put out a beacon call with a tweet about the event to his conservative followers before the event. It was then picked up by Fox News, Daily Caller and the UK publication Daily Mail. Right-wingers tried to claim they were defending 11-year-old performer Vanellope Macpherson through misinformation that she was being groomed. They also led on people to believe that Old Nick’s was a bar not fit for kids, when in fact it is a pub that is only closed to minors after 8 PM and often holds all-ages events during the day.

”As to those who say V is being forced into this, she is not. At the age of 7 she asked her aunt if she could participate. Sunshine, who is her real drag mother and mentor, said yes as she wanted to support her niece and let her express herself,” The family said in a statement published by the Eugene Weekly.

Around 11:30 AM Felix Raissner, who identified as a member of Vanellope’s extended family, held a press conference with an open mic in the back lot of Old Nick’s. They had put out a call to action on Facebook “to surround the pub with love and support for Vanellope and Drag Queen Story Time” a few days earlier.

“What does drag mean to you? Think about it. What really? Is it? Is it just the chance to perform? Is it the chance to explore who we are? Or is it just because we want to? There’s nothing wrong with that,” Raissner said to the crowd at the presser.

In attendance across the street from Old Nick’s was Proud Boys, neo-nazis, Christo-fascists, and more members of the far-right. Several of them carrying hand-guns, paintball guns, and/or mace. Richard Elce, a right wing extremist with history of violence, threatened to hit people with his flag pole, something he has tried before. A man in skull mask, who stood with a half dozen other the Rose City Nationalists, openly identified as a nazi and did a sieg heil.

In the middle of the road between the fascists instigators and the community members defending the families at Old Nick’s, was Lane County Commissioner-elect for Springfield, David Loveall. During the George Floyd BLM protests of 2020, Loveall stood with a group of other white men on Main Street in Springfield carrying rifles, intimidating peaceful protestors. Loveall said he was ”trying to get both sides” by attending the drag queen story time protest. This after days of threats that were targeted towards Old Nick’s by right-wingers.

“There is a religious side here and people that are protesting about some child issues they don’t agree with and there is some people over here protecting there rights as people that support what is going on,” Loveall said to two concerned community members asking him questions.

At about 12:30 PM the anti-queer right-wingers began retreating. As that was happening community defenders chanted ”go home nazis” and they backed up. As the fascists arrived about a block down they sprayed mace indiscriminately and shot underpowered paintball guns.

About a half hour later individuals started spreading the message that proud boys were stationed on the corners a block out — they never came and families were able to leave the venue in safety.

Dirt and Tires: Interview With a Veteran Anarchist

summerisle — Sat, 01 Oct 2022 00:00:00 -0700

The "Red Savior"

As younger leftists, often just entering a more fervent and deliberate anti-capitalism/anti-colonialism etc, it’s important to learn from those who have both theoretical and practical experience so we can more effectively combat those forces. That’s why I decided to interview Anarcho Communist Anonymous Belligerent (ACAB). ACAB is a gender nihilist and anarchist who’s participated in all sorts of direct action in the PNW, including most recently the building of an earthship. Having identified as an anarchist in one form or another since the age of 12, they have plenty of valuable experience and advice about political action.

Summerisle: Jumping right in, since as a college publication we have a younger staff and readership, I was wondering: when were you first introduced to anarchism?

Anarcho-Communist Anonymous Belligerent: My introduction to anarchism was kind of multi-pronged. I was reading a book on Liberation Theology as a precocious 12 year old which cited Noam Chomsky, and the footnote or endnote had an extended quote of his about American intervention in Latin America. I looked him up online and later at my local public library and found essays and articles and books, and he name drops people like Rudolf Rocker and Emma Goldman. I read them and was instantly hooked, and then when just a few years later the WTO protests happened in Seattle, I was following along on indymedia live and in the wake of it. That probably solidified what had been a more abstract anarchism for me. But at the same time, my parents (who were left-liberal/social democrat types not anarchists) had this accidentally anarchist way of raising their kids. We were involved in all household decisions my parents deemed impacting us, which to give an example included when they were deciding whether to buy a new BBQ to replace the old junker that had finally broken down or get a chainsaw to help with cutting wood. They were going to get both, but one was more expensive than the other and it would impact family finances and things they would be able to pay for for us, as we always fluctuated between a working class and lower middle class family in terms of income. So even things most parents would just decide without input from their kids, my parents were conscious of including us in and giving us a sense of agency and autonomy and mutual respect. So those things, I would say, combined to make me a pretty natural anarchist.

SI: Oh, so you weren’t even a teen yet. How did that sort of solidified anarchism grow and evolve as you grew up?

ACAB: Aside from reading voraciously in political science and political philosophy, I also involved myself in as much activism and action as I could. Everything from union actions, especially teacher’s strikes and things like that I was always participating in as a student, to protests and marches and things like that. Hadn’t yet learned lessons on what was effective versus useless action, what things could hamper effective action or anything about security culture, but by the time the international 2003 Iraq War protests were being planned I was somewhat more aware of these things. I’d say that where I really began to address the ways in which my own politics were still shot through with streaks of liberalism (as so many anti-capitalists, anarchists and socialists and communists alike, have going on whether they want to acknowledge it or not) was probably in the wake of those protests, in particular I remember a sort of broad left coalition meeting ahead of the protests in the nearest major city to where I was living that a fellow anarchist and punk childhood friend and I attended. Degenerated into passive aggressive sniping between anarchists and Marxists and other nonsense and we wound up walking out of it and just doing our own thing in the streets when the protest actually happened. Was also around that time I was shocked into harsh realizations of my own subjectivity as a settler and colonizer, and the ways in which my anti-capitalist politic was re-inscribing settler-colonial entitlement over economic and political activity on unceded, occupied territory in my settler anti-capitalist imaginary of possible futures. So I’d have been around mid-to-late teens then, and I count myself lucky to have learned those things that early.

SI: Do you think that cooperation between anarchists and Marxists and socialists is possible and/or effective? I know there’s a lot of (inane) online discourse between the three but I don’t know how much that spills out into modern-day activism.

ACAB: I think it really depends on the people involved, honestly! I’ve lived in a few places in my life, and it’s interesting how there is always a big, public division between anarchists and Marxists when some of the most solid crews I ran with for direct action had both without any friction. It might be that the personalities required for doing clandestine shit under cover of night are more goal-oriented and focused on working smoothly as a unit to minimize risks of anyone involved seeing consequences whereas the more public scenes attract…other kinds of personalities lol

SI: I’m also curious, what do you think are some of the most pervasive/toxic streaks of liberalism that find their way into anti-capitalism?

ACAB: Electoralism is often a big one in people who self-identify in the “it’s in my social media bio” way with a variety of anti-capitalism or another, and not just younger naïve folks either. It used to blow my mind how often I’d encounter someone who was an elder to me in the anarchist scene who would advocate lesser evil electoralism but it no longer does. I think it’s largely untrue, the conservative adage about how you conservatize as you age, but you do sometimes see these weird ways in which as an anti-capitalist ages they start drifting into left-liberalism in some areas while having this patchwork of genuine anti-capitalist stances in there too, and I’ve ceased being surprised by it. I think that there are ways that people view how the economy works, or how politics works or what the solutions are that can be more liberal than genuinely anti-capitalist. Stances on pacifism and non-violence are a common origin point for some of these misunderstandings in my experience, and I find myself constantly recommending Peter Gelderloos and Paulo Freire to people, or reframing their arguments to people, to try and purge them of this gateway drug to liberalism. I think, for what it’s worth, that it is ultimately a good thing that our impulse tends to be violence-averse and seeking other solutions, but we are highly unlikely to have the luxury of avoiding violence if we want the world to look meaningfully different in good directions from the one we were born into and live in. That aversion to violence is what drives a lot of otherwise sensible anti-capitalists into just allowing their radical energies to be redirected into controllable and even net negative things like lesser evil electoralism and blinders on bad analyses of capitalist economics or the politics in capitalist countries.

SI: Continuing to mine the above response, I want to know: what do you consider effective vs useless direct action?

ACAB: I think direct action, generally speaking, is usually pretty effective. I think useless action is precisely the stuff that is not direct. We don’t often think about why we call it “direct action”, but so much of our “political action” is mediated and not direct. Voting, letter writing and phone calls and emails (and forbid the thought social media posts) to elected representatives and mainstream media, submitting marching routes and protest details to cops and city hall and doing a polite little show under glass for the powerful to chuckle at and, at best, trot out a politician badly acting contrition and assuring that “your voices have been heard” and “change is necessary” to mollify people, that kinda shit. What those kinds of things can be good for is meeting other similarly frustrated people and networking, I don’t knock people attending non-violent liberal protests! I still do it, it’s a good place to meet folks who think like you but maybe don’t have the political education (who does in capitalist education systems lmao) or even just other fellow jaded anti-capitalists showing up for the same reason you are (or the ones with some liberalism left in ’em that’d still be worth making connections with). But none of that mediated, or indirect, action is effective or useful. Infinitely ignorable by the powerful. The way power acts is just not impacted by those things, much as they might put on little puppet shows of it being impacted for our benefit now and again. Now, if you look at some working class cultures like France, they almost take it far enough. National strikes happen way easier there, and they include direct action tactics like occupying resource extraction/first and second order processing workplaces and the blocking of logistics whether road or rail or at airports or docks or what have you. But with that boot on the throat of capital, they always pull back when tepid demands are met. If they’d only press the boot harder for a few more months…

SI: If you’ll allow me to pivot for a bit and lay bare the process of pitching this interview, part of said pitch was mentioning the earthship project you were working on, and how you or a friend, I can’t remember which, offhandedly described it as an “accidental queer anarchist commune”. Do you think this description is accurate?

ACAB: Ha! Yeah, a local gay man came out from a nearby and almost as remote rural community to excitedly ask us if we were a queer commune and it wasn’t like an intention or anything but a lot of us who are planning to live there are one or two of the letters in LGBT and politically we are almost all anarchists so…it kind of is? We hadn’t thought of it that way until he asked us, as we didn’t like set out to form a commune it was just resources coming together among friends over time until we could get something started.

SI: For the readers, can you explain the thought process that you and your friends have behind building an earthship?

ACAB: It’s a bunch of different desires and thinking going into it, I’d say! Like any good anarchist project, we’re all coming to it from different places and adding our distinctness to it. I think that one could argue some shared things in there are trying to live in a way that is more ecologically sustainable, trying to escape as many of the strictures and miseries of life under capitalism as we possibly can, to learn and practice and develop more practical and life-sustaining and joy-creating skills and talents. We are trying to make as many connections as we can in the local community and make ourselves available for helping folks out with things, and it seems to have worked as the strapping young anarchists new to the area is who a local called to help her with a pair of cougars on her land rather than any of the neighbours she’d known for longer! We also have plans to reach out to the local indigenous nations whose shared territory that land is (won’t do a land acknowledgement here since I’m trying to remain anonymous here lol) so that we can discuss paying into their nations and/or legal funds at least what we are compelled on penalty of land seizure to pay in property taxes to a settler-colonial state whose authority we don’t recognize, and to get their opinion on projects we want to do like a permaculture food forest that tries to get indigenous plants and fungus cultivated and spread over the piece of land we’re on, maybe pay someone to come out and consult and give advice. So, I don’t know, the long and short of it is that we’re trying to re-orient ourselves and live more in accordance with how we want to live. Can’t do it 100%, but where can you while capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, white supremacy and racism, cisheteropatriarchy and transphobia/homophobia/misogyny, ableism, fatphobia, etc, etc still have such totalizing impacts over most of this planet? Gotta do the best we can.

SI: Yeah, I was wondering how your earthship project gelled with decolonialism

ACAB: I think, as settlers and colonizers, we have an obligation when we actually own the land (well, the bank often actually owns the land but you know, like not renting and paying a landlord but having a mortgage or having paid off a mortgage on something) to make concrete gestures that go beyond lip service to the communities whose land we exist on. In areas where those peoples have been completely wiped out by our genocide, I think the closest communities to you that still do exist are the obvious choice. I was friends with an anarchist who lived on what was once Beothuk territory and he expressed confusion about who he would get in touch with when I was talking about this very thing with him, and I remember expressing incredulity he couldn’t think of any indigenous peoples nearby or how he’d look that up with an entire internet at his fingertips. The ways in which neighbouring peoples are so often deeply interconnected in a borderless and unbounded way, not just in the past but presently, means that there is a deep amount of intergenerational trauma for survivors of genocide no matter where they are obviously but there is a special kind of pain and trauma from surviving while a people you had always traded with, intermarried with, had relations and cousins among their people…is wiped out to the last. Kind of an aside, I guess, but my point I think is that the people who know best how to take steps down a path of decolonization are going to be the people who belong to the territory you are on since time immemorial. It’s easy enough (if you can get past self-flagellating settler guilt) to get in touch and express a desire to materially contribute and get to know their struggles and joys, to contribute what you can as a guest on the land like the first settlers were and be a good guest on the land unlike those first settlers who violated every precept of being a good guest by either indigenous or European standards of what a good guest is.

SI: Finally, if there’s one big thing you want readers to take away from this segment, both leftists of all kind and left-liberals and social democrats and such who might be interested in radicalizing further and learning more about anticapitalism/anticolonialism, what would you want it to be?

ACAB: Try things! Give yourself space to fuck up, do things wrong. That’s how you learn! Practice makes perfect, and nobody is perfect without any practice at all. If you want to get good at direct action, start small! I’m sure there’s locks on dumpsters with perfectly good food in them that you could squirt superglue into so they have to take bolt cutters to them, over and over until they stop replacing them. Low impact stuff that lets you exercise all the skills that go into more serious direct action (casing a location for camera coverage, planning a midnight excursion, executing it, getting back home discretely, etc) without any real risk if you fuck up or get caught doing it. Stuff you can do solo, though obviously everything is more fun with friends. Just try stuff! Do it! Start small, then scale up as you can get more people interested in practicing skills with you. Learning to pick locks with friends is super fun, even if you’re just doing it on a lockpicking kit you bought in one of your bedrooms together. Flex those muscles so you can apply yourself later. And, for the love of fuck, keep friendship and high trust relationships as a more important barometer than what ideological label someone expresses to you. There’s a great Foucault interview called “Friendship as a Form of Life” or something like that, which spawned a zine I’m sure you can find in a search engine with more than just that interview in it that’s really worth checking out, and I think about it a lot when I think about all the friendships that have led to successful direct action in my life. Including aboveground stuff like assembling and passing out kits to unhoused folks in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic with essentials and masks and food! Don’t just think you gotta smash shit in paranoid secrecy, there’s LOTS to try…but go out and try it! With friends! Make friends who wanna do it! It’s the stuff that different worlds are made of.

Ducks Want More Bucks: UO Student Workers Kick Off Union Effort

Mae Bracelin — Sat, 01 Oct 2022 00:00:00 -0700

Photo by Amanita Minute

For the first time in 50 years Undergraduate Student Workers at the University of Oregon have initiated the process to organize a union. Using the ASUO Street Faire as a kickoff, University of Oregon Student Workers began a card signing campaign on Week 3 of fall term. To file with the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries the campaign will need fifty percent of UO Student Workers to sign a card designating the union as their legal bargaining entity.

On the 20th of October the campaign hosted a kickstart rally with representatives from the GTFF, UA and other local organizations. Union cards were signed, pizza was distributed and speeches were given. Mae Bracelin from the UOSW gave a speech addressing some common concerns.

Hey! I recognize a lot of you either from organizing, card signing or the occasional off campus party. If you missed the beginning of the event, my name is Mae and I am an organizer for the University of Oregon Undergraduate Student Worker Union. I mostly focus on outreach, talking to people about the union and spreading information about what we all are trying to build here. In this line of work, I hear the same two objections over and over again. I wanna address those today.

First, the thing I hear most often is “I like my job, why do I need a union if my job is already pretty decent?” The answer to this question is simple. This union is being built by all of us, it’s the collective effort of every single Undergrad Student Worker and every single non-worker volunteer. It cannot be built without the effort of every single one of us. This union is not just for Dining Hall workers. This union is not just for University Health Service workers. This union is not just for Clerks or UHS workers. It’s for every undergraduate worker no matter where you work. Maybe the conditions are nicer in certain areas, but a union card signed is not just a vote for unionizing your sector, it’s a vote for unionizing every sector. Without the support of clerks at Lillis or ASUO workers, Dining Hall workers and RAs wont get a union. On top of that, even if you have a comfy job, without a union you do not have real representation. The union allows us to have a seat at the bargaining table with Management, a way to deal with any hypothetical grievances that may come up. Divided we are weak but together we can achieve anything.

Second, something I hear a lot is “I’m worried about signing this card, I don’t wanna get in trouble or get fired.” This is a valid concern, the University and a lot of shift managers are scared of what we can do. The union will empower workers to be on an equal playing field with administration and the managerial class, that’s something that they are scared of. Though I understand it’s scary to publicly support something that admin doesn’t like,let me remind you of your rights. It is completely and patently illegal to punish a worker for supporting a union and we will go to bat for you. The University is not above the law and they know that, they are not gonna walk themselves into a labor lawsuit, especially not when there are this many eyes on them.

The University of Oregon is not the Board of Directors, It is not management, it’s not even Student Government. It is all us here today, the workers that make this place run. If dining hall workers, or clerks, or RAs or Rec center workers walked out today the University would grind to a halt. This institution can only operate at the consent of its workers and students. Don’t let the rich businessmen who think they own us forget that. We are the university and we are not gonna let management treat us like shit and pay us as little as possible just so they can pad their wallets with the profit of our work. That is why we are here today, it is why we are coming together to stand in solidarity, all undergraduate workers, to fight for our interests. We are going to win the election and we are going to have our place at the table with management whether they like it or not.

Making Mental Health Rad: Community Movements Challenge the Paradigm on Mental Health in Lane County

J. Ellis — Sat, 01 Oct 2022 00:00:00 -0700

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Click on the dots to check out photos!

On October 1, 2022, Radical Alternative Development (RAD) Eugene and the Emerald Shred Collective (ESC) came together to throw a benefit show and skate competition to commemorate two Washington-Jefferson skatepark community members whose lives were lost to mental health complications last year. The families of Ben “Money Jones” Moody and Silas “Steezy” Strimple are collaborating with these community groups to make sure Ben and Silas are remembered.

Mike claims to be “kinda a skatepark dad in a lot of ways,” saying, “but I’m also still a kid at heart. Everyday I get to skate is a good day…I think that might blow some of them away as I’m 48, but skate like I’m 28. It’s my hope that the young ones see that skateboarding can carry them far through their life and you don’t have to quit or stop for anything…I have skated 3-4 times a week pretty consistently my whole life.”

Mike remembers clearly his first time meeting Silas and Ben. Silas, at 11 years old, was at the skatepark the same day as Mike wearing a Bathory shirt. In his best death metal growl, Mike joked “Hey, gimme that shirt!” From there, they became buds, bonding through music and Silas’ obvious devotion to the sport. As Silas developed early onset schizophrenia, the WJ regulars did their best to provide a support system for him. Mike knew the “Moody Clan” through Ben and Drake’s dad, Drew, a longtime skateboarder and friend. Ben grew up skating with his dad and older brother, which is how Mike came to know him. Mike proudly recalls how Ben and Silas grew into their skills, skateboarding was their calling. He got to see them shine, and he carried their passion with them on his ride.

Ben, 17, died by suicide on March 9, 2022. One year earlier, fellow skater Silas was found dead at 18 at a recycling plant outside Austin, Texas. Silas struggled with schizophrenia— his family worked to get him treatment to no avail because many facilities lack the resources to help individuals without the material stability to continuously seek care. Surviving friends and family believe that these deaths could have been prevented if Lane County had more robust mental health programs that transcend traditional “awareness” and focused more seriously on harm reduction and resource access. Because of this, people like BriJit, Daniel, and Mike of RAD and ESC are making leaps and bounds to change the paradigm around mental health in our community.

The mental health crisis in Lane County is only escalating in its extremity. In turn, the community has turned to more radical and unconventional ways to call attention to the inadequate social infrastructure that exacerbates the struggles of people like Ben and Silas, or you and me.

The following feature is the product of conversations between the Insurgent and the organizers of this tribute. Thank you to BriJit and Mike for your time, and to our readers for their attention.

A Skate Odyssey

Mike Crespino of Eugene announced last spring that he would be skating 831 miles from Eugene to the Bay Area in honor of Ben and Silas’ memory. This September, he kept his word. Crespino, at 48 years old, pushed off on his odyssey from Washington-Jefferson skatepark on the morning of September 12, 2022, making it to the Bay Area in just 21 days, ahead of the projected 27 days. With the help of fellow skateboarders and friends, Mike Bucknell and Ethan Hall, following him by car, Crespino skated down the major highways from Oregon to California to deliver customized skateboards to Ben and Silas’ families in time for the benefit show taking place in Eugene on Oct. 1. This journey was part of a successful fundraising effort through Almonte Boardshop in Eugene and crowdfunding platforms like GoFundMe. Friends all over were able to follow the journey on social media at the Emerald Shred Collective’s Instagram page (@emerald_shred_collective).

It wasn’t all smooth skating as Mike made his way to the Bay Area to deliver the memorial decks to Ben and Silas’s families, including Ben’s older brother and skate mentor, Drake Moody. On September 22, Mike made a social media post from the ER. At this point in his journey, he’d already made incredible timing and landed in his hometown of Eureka in Humboldt County, California where he reunited with his mother, Shirley Crespino. When on a walk in their neighborhood she fell and fractured her face, incurring an injury that required an ambulance trip and stitches. Right in the middle of his trip, Mike was confronted with his own struggle, and was unsure whether to continue on. In heartfelt solidarity with Mike’s mission, Shirley was more concerned that she “ruined” her son’s trip more than her own health. At his mother’s insistence, Mike took to the streets once again, determined to reach the Bay and complete his personal tribute to the scene back at home.

The ups and downs of Mike’s story are symbolic of the very real ups and downs of managing and recovering from the realities of living with mental health issues. Some called it a hero’s journey along the way, as Mike coasted down the coast he encountered challenges on every level: both physical and metaphysical. Like the very best protagonists, he saw every setback as an opportunity to make meaning out of hardship. Talk about PMA— this trip is it.

Against these formidable obstacles, Mike says he used each challenge as an opportunity to overcome trauma, mental and physical blocks, as well as glean a greater lesson through all the sweat, tears, and tumbles. Exerting all his strength and willpower, Mike climbed up hilly highways to chase the sweet release of the ride back down; a poetic example of the work we have to put in, the strength we must find within ourselves with the support of community, to achieve the relief of overcoming obstacles. Whether that obstacle is two literal miles of uphill asphalt or the Sisyphian crawl that comes with depression, anxiety, and other mental blockades, Mike’s personal success proves that such summits are possible.

The first week was reportedly the hardest, but both Mike’s body and mentality quickly adjusted to the challenge that lay ahead. According to Mike, his time on the road forced him to look at his own blindspots, challenging his own self-destructive internal behaviors and dialogues. The task at hand required him to confront fears old and new, but this story is about so much more than one man’s journey. Mike is in good company of other skaters that braved similar treks, citing skaters like the legendary Jack Smith, the _Shred America _crew, and Calleigh Little, the first trans woman to complete a solo cross country long-distance push on longboard. Following in their wheels —at double the age of those before him— Mike pulled himself out of a low place and pushed to preserve, above all personal gain or glory to be had, the legacy created by Ben and Silas. Through his own personal struggle and triumph, Mike vindicated the loss of beloved community members, raising money for their memorial and spreading a positive mental attitude along the way.

		Photo by Arik Dethlefsen

A Mental Health Mosh-athon

Back home, BriJit and Daniel of Rot//Woven and RAD put in over six months of hard work and networking to put on the biggest metal festival Eugene’s scene has seen in some time.

Bands, organizations, and skaters arrived at Washington-Jefferson skatepark in Eugene as early as 10 am the morning of October 1. It was a scorcher of a fall day, the sun stood unabated in the sky, shining over the festivities in the park. Baking on the concrete for the entire twelve hours harkened back to my days as a young punk at Warped Tour or Riot Fest. Skaters whizzed by the table where we sat, handed out zines, and connected with local mental health outreach groups, such as: Suicide Prevention Coalition of Lane County, Food Not Bombs, Community Outreach through Radical Empowerment (CORE), Daisy CHAIN, Transponder, HIV Alliance, Free Herbal Medicine, Burrito Brigade, White Bird, Looking Glass, Black Thistle Street Aid, Sexual Assault Support Services, and Greenhill Cycling Center. Metal and hardcore punk bands provided the soundtrack for the entire day, with nonstop music from 1-10pm. A playlist of all the groups will be attached to this article— seriously, check them out.

The day was significant for the type of community building organizers envisioned: thanks to a spirited SKATE competition that awarded custom boards and other Almonte merch to the winner, moshable music that excited the crowd, and easy access to a variety of mental health resources distributed by friendly faces. The excitement of the event was tangible in the way the crowd moved, the fact that so many stayed the entire day, and the over $2000 they raised to go toward suicide prevention in at risk communities as well as a memorial installation at Washington-Jefferson skatepark.

BriJit Jenkins, 35, and her partner Daniel are both local social workers and members in Rot//Woven. Following the successful benefit show, BriJit took the time out of her busy schedule as a mom, musician, and addictions counselor to share her experience as an organizer and what it’s like to be on the frontlines of the struggles in our scene.

BriJit, a proud mom to three rad teenagers, has been booking and playing shows for a long time now—nourishing a lifelong passion for community building alongside her work in mental health care. Ben was a family friend who would hang out with BriJit’s kids “all_ _the time,” and news of his death devastated their family. In an interview, she discussed the extent of the mental health crisis she’s encountered firsthand, sharing both her personal background and her professional experience with this issue.

“It seems like, so many kids are killing themselves…I was working at Sacred Heart Hospital for the entire pandemic as a mental health and alcohol counselor, I didn’t work a single fucking day from home. I was underneath the bridge, there every fucking day. I can’t even tell you how many people have killed themselves in the county and overdosed and died just within the last few years, [and] it’s becoming a younger and younger age.” Emphatically, she went on to cite the public health emergency on suicide impacting young people aged 12-24, referencing two suicides at her kids’ high school in the last year. Thereafter she transferred them to another school.

Frustrated with the lacking social and medical infrastructure to deal with the scope of mental health in Oregon, and all of its intersections, RAD formed informally many years ago to be a free-thinking collective that would advocate for more critical and holistic approaches to mental health care. The idea for a benefit show of this scale has been in the works for three years, but the city continually denied permits until awareness and attention around suicide prevention increased in light of the pandemic and a suicide cluster in spring 2022.

Finally, last spring the city agreed to RAD’s idea for a benefit show at WJ skatepark, an event which marks the beginning of the collective’s collaboration with suicide prevention outreach groups in Lane County, such as Suicide Prevention Coalition of Lane County and the Youth and Teen Empowerment Program.

This is a step in the right direction. It seems like mental health resources are abundant these days, but is it as _accessible _as it can be? This is something RAD is working to actively address. RAD’s goal for the outcome of the show was simple, but neglected in mainstream conversations about suicide prevention and healthcare: it was an opportunity for “bringing people together, bridging the gap between services, and making it [self care and getting help] cool, and non stigmatized.” Despite increased awareness about mental health issues, those who struggle the most (marginalized groups like poor and working class people, BIPOC, LGBTQIA3+, etc.) are often those least likely to receive meaningful care and treatment due to socioeconomic barriers.

BriJit dreams of an ice-cream truck approach to accessing care -the kind of outreach groups like White Bird and Black Thistle Street Aid do- physically bringing medical care to the communities least likely to seek out or receive it. The benefit show at WJ was likely the largest collection of mental health counselors and resources the park has ever hosted. Bridging the stuffy, often classist, formality of reaching out for treatment with the casual and fun spaces created by skateboarding, punk, or other counterculture communities, is an important element in reaching out to traditionally neglected populations and practicing holistic approaches to prevention.

ESC and RAD are taking action to change the current paradigm on mental health awareness. As Mike says, “awareness without action is avoidance.” In a world that operates on a short attention span, we need to dedicate consistent, concentrated, and long-term effort if we want to meaningfully reduce the number of lives lost to suicide and other mental health complications. Effective action can start really small, and become something really big. ESC and RAD’s contributions to this cause started as an idea, and transformed into a memorial and prevention movement that will forever preserve the legacies Ben and Silas leave behind in our community.

This is about remembrance and resilience. We need to strengthen our communities -our relationships with each other- to prevent our friends, comrades, and family from dying too young. The work of ESC and RAD is a testament to an inspiring momentum in our community, exemplifying how important, and surprisingly achievable, it can be to have a positive impact on people’s lives. This is part of a larger trend in radical communities towards building community resilience and solidarity through our actions and relationships. In our conversations, Mike and BriJit proudly testified to the evolution of the punk and skateboarding scenes to become safer spaces for all, thanks to the work of people over time to make them more inclusive therein engendering stronger solidarity amongst individuals in these collectives. A big part of this movement is building an atmosphere of care and mutual aid— we look out for each other. We cannot support ourselves without the support of others, lean into the spaces people are making to seek out that help.

This is only the beginning. ESC and RAD plan to continue with their track-record of following through on their goals: stay tuned to these groups for updates on building a memorial installation at WJ skatepark for people to shred on in honor of Ben, Silas, and other community members whose lives were lost to mental health battles. In our hearts we all know suicide isn’t a solution, but our solutions to suicide aren’t working. Let’s get creative, engage our passions, and carry the memories of lost loved ones forward in finding better solutions in prevention and care approaches.

Stay up to date with RAD and ESC on their social media profiles:

@emerald_shred_collective on Instagram.

@rad.eugene.oregon on Instagram

On the Print Issue, it was falsely stated that BriJit has two, not three, kids. This has been corrected for the website edition of this article.

Practical Solidarity: 3 Things You Can Do To Support A Revolution

ch0ccyra1n — Sat, 01 Oct 2022 00:00:00 -0700

When we talk about “Solidarity”, there often is a problem where it turns into a leftist version of “thoughts and prayers”, rather than what it was originally meant to be: an umbrella term for actions taken from one place to support the people of another. This article seeks to provide a universal jumping-off point, instead of focusing on a particular state of affairs in a particular state’s borders. The situation on the ground is always changing, and this article would otherwise become irrelevant after a month or two. With that being said, here are some things you can do to support a revolution from your position outside of the place where it’s happening, ordered by difficulty from easiest to hardest.

Run a Tor Snowflake Proxy

If you understand how to install a browser extension, you can run a snowflake, which allows people to access the uncensored and open internet in countries with internet restrictions. Internet access is typically clamped down upon by state authorities during a revolution, such as in 2017 during Catalonia’s Independence Referendum, where websites providing information on how to vote were blocked by local Internet Service Providers.¹ For more information on running a snowflake, check out snowflake.torproject.org.

Donate to a Mutual Aid Project

If you have disposable income, it is extremely helpful to use it to support the revolutionary struggle abroad by donating to a mutual aid project. Importantly, you should make sure to do your own research to understand where your contributions go before donating. Often, these will be prisoner support funds to help with bail and legal fees for detained rebels. However, there are also funds set up to provide resources for cooperative projects, such as Schools for Chiapas² which helps fund education projects in autonomous communities controlled by the Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico.

Write to Prisoners

Being a prisoner is tough. Being imprisoned for political activities is even tougher, and knowing that there are people on the outside who support and care about them is an important way to keep up the fighting spirit. Two readily available places to write letters to prisoners is via the Prison Project at the ROAR Center in the University of Oregon (check the calendar for details on when they meet) or through the Anarchist Black Cross Belarus, who provide a handy form³ and will translate letters from English into Russian and handle logistics of mailing it to prisoners in the country for you.

Author’s Note

I hope this article was helpful in providing a few ideas for solidarity for the leftist who, like me, found the rallies and statements to seem insubstantial when it comes to helping revolutionaries on the ground. There certainly are many more ways to support a revolution than the 3 listed in this article, but these are relatively easy for people who might not have much to offer but still want to contribute to the struggle for freedom.

Notes

Queer in the Field: On Allyship and Contradictory Commitments

Serbal Vidrio — Sat, 01 Oct 2022 00:00:00 -0700

I recently returned from a summer of research in an Indigenous community in southwest Colombia with some questions in mind. What are the limits of allyship? What happens when values collide? More generally, how can we hold true to ourselves and our values while upholding the struggles of people who deserve our support but whose values we might not share?

We can begin to answer those questions by acknowledging that life is an exercise in negotiation. From infancy to the deathbed, we are in constant encounter with other people and their diverse opinions, perspectives, beliefs, desires, decisions, requests, demands, and biases. Most people’s “success” in life, however you want to define it, depends to a large extent on their ability to reconcile (or sideline) their own interests, beliefs, and needs relative to those of others—whether these be interpersonal, social, political, etc. As the saying goes, “we live in a society,” and one of the corollaries of this truism is that we must often accommodate ourselves to others for the sake of peaceable social relations.

Due to the advantages conferred by privilege, some people are free from the daily burden of negotiation and compromise based on identity. White, straight, cis, and able-bodied people—to arbitrarily pick just a few identities—are made to prove themselves a lot less than are racialized, queer, trans, and disabled people. If you care about diminishing that harmful differential, it’s important to understand what it means to be an ally to those on the disadvantaged side of that line. Being an ally as a person advantaged by the privilege attached to certain identities means stepping aside for those without that advantage so that they can be heard. It can also mean using your privilege to advance others’ interests. You can do this by giving platforms for people ordinarily silenced to be heard or by taking their place on the frontlines of direct actions. In general, allies must be able to prioritize the interests of marginalized and silenced people above their own when the stakes are higher for the latter.

While these are general truths, they become especially evident in situations of intercultural encounter, when the identities, interests, and expectations carried by people of radically different backgrounds are often in marked contrast, if not explicit contradiction. This raises the question of what allyship means in situations in which core values differ between allies and those they want to support. I am referring especially to the fact that many marginalized communities around the world are engaged in important struggles for social rights that should be supported by potential allies while, at the same time, harboring discriminatory attitudes that contradict the values or identities of those same allies. To explain what I mean, let’s take an example from my own experience.

I am a White, bisexual, college-educated, Jewish, cisgender man who has had to navigate many a different social ecosystem in my time, from my rural conservative hometown which was once the KKK capital of Oregon to my wide-ranging travels in Latin America and the former USSR. Guess which two of the descriptors above have caused me the most trouble? Queerphobia—and, within the queer community, bi erasure—is the norm in most of the world, and most of the US too, though you couldn’t necessarily tell from within the bubble that is Eugene, meaning that I have often had to obscure my bi identity for sociality’s sake. Antisemitism, too, is just as widespread; I have been to plenty of places at home and abroad in which to out myself as Jewish might have been as dangerous as displaying my bisexuality. Still, in Oregon, by and large, I can be who I am without worrying about consequences.

Now pivot to an Indigenous community in the rural Andes-Amazon interface of southwest Colombia, a place called the Sibundoy Valley and a people called the Kamëntsá. During the summer of 2022, I conducted three months of ethnographic fieldwork with the Kamëntsá, staying with a host family in a rural district of the valley and investigating processes of cultural reproduction and territorial autonomy within the community. I situate my work within a tradition of activist anthropology, seeking to bring attention to both the problems and the resistances at work in this community. I view the struggle of the Kamëntsá as important and worth upholding, a belief to which my research is wholly committed.

But despite my feeling of commitment to the community and the bonds of allyship that link me to my Indigenous friends there, I was not free to express my identities with the same liberty as in Eugene. Like most rural and Indigenous communities in Colombia, the Kamëntsá practice Catholicism, albeit a syncretic variety that incorporates prehispanic Indigenous elements. The prevailing views of gender and sexuality in the community are those of the Catholic Church, which is not known for its progressivism in these matters. If I had outed myself as bisexual, it could have compromised my relationships in the community and given rise to mistrust, if not outright endangerment. My ability to work with the Kamëntsá in the interest of supporting and platforming their movements for social rights, environmental protection, and cultural and territorial autonomy is directly contingent on suppressing an aspect of my identity—my bisexuality—that many in the community would judge me harshly for. Likewise, I could not be honest about the fact that my partner at the time was a trans man. What would my collaborators think?

This dynamic is characteristic of many engagements between allies and the communities they wish to support. It forces us to ask where our loyalties lie and tests the limits of our ability to compartmentalize and sideline our own values in favor of those of our collaborators. Where does this leave allyship?

It once again comes down to negotiation. Here I present a solution that may seem controversial to some: unless your safety and dignity are on the line, humble yourself. Recognize that we all have learning to do—you as much as people whose beliefs you might stereotype as irreconcilable with your own. I am not asking you to doubt your values or integrity, just your claim to moral objectivity. And recognize, also, that if changing the world is your objective, you will have to learn to stand in solidarity with those you disagree with. Life is a series of negotiations and some call for sacrifice. It seems a small sacrifice to me, however, to temporarily suppress my bisexuality in the interest of supporting my Kamëntsá friends, for whom the stakes are much higher than they are for me. With that said, I am privileged to be able to hide that aspect of my identity without much trouble. Others do not have that privilege, so their answer to the question of when to sideline one’s own interests for others’ will look different from mine.

Beyond my field site in rural Colombia, this dilemma has relevance for all of us interested in activism and allyship. It’s an ironic truth that leftist circles are often especially bad at enacting the kind of inclusion and tolerance of difference that their members pay lip service to. By dividing themselves over minor differences, leftists are shooting themselves in the foot. Only by learning to put interpersonal issues aside and getting used to a little discomfort—an inevitable feature of all social life—can leftists fulfill their duty to allyship and help strike a blow against the systems of oppression that seek to divide us but against which we must all stand united.

Rising Fascism Makes Community Defense Necessary

Ross Elliot — Sat, 01 Oct 2022 00:00:00 -0700

Between 2005-2010, I published a ‘zine called American Gun Culture Report. My writers were overwhelmingly folks of color, LGBTQ and others who owned firearms because they cared about community defense and knew the violent history of gun control being used to disarm persecuted populations.

Since those years, I have been contacted by countless individuals sharing stories about using guns to resolve dangerous situations. Typical were examples close to me. One friend pointed her shotgun at a man who broke into her house, scaring him away, and another friend recently drew his pistol on a knife wielding man attempting a gay bashing attack, holding him until police arrived. In none of these cases were shots fired and a firearm ended the confrontations peacefully.

Many people told me they kept such stories themselves, because there is such a harmful stigma connecting guns with conservative politics. There are easily available statistics about firearms being used for terrible acts, yet none documenting how often they save lives. However, just a brief look at American history demonstrates the important role armed defense has played, from the Appalachian Mining Wars to Mississippi Civil Rights struggle. In more recent times, I have provided firearms training out in rural parts of Oregon where immigrant communities exist under regular threat from Right wing groups and law enforcement is distrusted or simply unavailable.

But gun violence finally touched my life. Last February, a dear friend was shot and almost killed at the hands of a fascist mass shooter who opened fire on a peaceful police accountability protest at a Portland park. One woman died and several others were wounded before antifascist security used their AR-15 to quickly stop him. If Measure 114 were in effect, my friend and many others would surely be dead.

Before voting, please consider all the consequences.

Thank you for your time.

Ross Eliot

www.occupy2a.blog

Shared Services: Corporate Takeover of the University of Oregon

anonymous — Sat, 01 Oct 2022 00:00:00 -0700

Art by Rosie

In March of 2013, the Governance and Policy Committee of the Oregon State Board of Higher Education published a report titled Shared Services for the University of Oregon. Very few took note of the report’s significance and the implications it carried for the future of public university operations. The report begins on page one by citing an example from medieval Europe, “In medieval Europe, individual scholars (often former monks) had collected students for tutoring. Ultimately, they banded together in communities and, later, designated others to provide services for them (charging fees, keeping records, setting the times and places for classes).” Despite their best effort to seek justification through historical precedent, the comparison falls flat as they reference a period that was precapitalist and driven by entirely different motivations than our contemporary society.

However, this is hardly the most concerning component of the fifty-two-page report. On page two the report notes, “The arguments for shared services are fourfold: to hold down costs, to improve service, to mitigate risk, and to ensure consistency. Almost all the efforts now in progress across the United States focus on one or more of these dimensions.” The language within the report is clearly conscious of the fact that most people don’t want their public University to operate in lockstep with the global capitalist hegemony and thus it is incredibly measured in its descriptions, leading the average reader to assume good faith.

In fact, the report emphasizes multiple times that shared services will be undertaken in an attempt to reduce tuition and improve services of students. However, the report also consistently contradicts this as it emphasizes even more strongly the importance of the University cutting costs as an institution. For example, on page three the report writers note, “Devoting more resources to those aspects of universities that pertain most directly to student success—instruction and student services—demands that universities be efficient and seek the lowest cost and highest quality means of delivering both direct and support services.” Similarly, on the next page they note, “But, even if the overall motivation were one of customer service (which, arguably, it should be), the shared services enterprise cannot ignore the cost control and consistency goals of the public and the state.”

Additionally, the report lists ‘12 Principles’ of shared services, the most eyebrow-raising of them being: “The Shared Services Enterprise will not be a state agency.” Considering that the University of Oregon is a public school, this is incredibly confusing: how could a public school have entirely privatized service infrastructure?

As confusing as this is, it is in line with the ideas put forth by Joshua Hunt in his 2018 book University of Nike: How Corporate Cash Bought American Higher Education, in which he details the massive corporate donations the University began accepting after the state cut funding for public universities by 20 percent in 1990. Between 1994 and 2018, Nike founder Phil Knight donated around $1 billion to the University of Oregon. The author of the book said in a 2018 NY Post interview, “He acts like these are not gifts, but investments from which he expects a certain type of loyalty.” Between Knight and the cadre of other millionaires and billionaires who compose the UO Board of Trustees such as Columbia Sportswear CEO; Tim Boyle, Goldman-Sachs board member; Ross Kari, and former special advisor to Hillary Clinton; Toya Fick, this public institution is rapidly transforming into a streamlined corporate enterprise.

Despite these plans being in the works for what would appear to be over a decade, the announcement that shared services would be implemented wasn’t made until June of 2022, less than 6 months before the changes take effect at the beginning of 2023. When talking to faculty and staff at the University, it’s apparent that there is an overwhelming feeling of uncertainty. Many departments are hoping to receive the services and support they’ve so desperately needed for years, but others fear that the transition will actually cost them services and leave them with little to no support. The laundry list of changes being undertaken on multiple levels of this institution is too long for this single article, but one of the most fundamental changes being made is the structuring of the departments.

The 32 separate departments that comprised UO are being merged into 8, meaning 4 departments will merge together to form one. For example, Geography, Anthropology, Environmental Science and Global Studies were once four independent departments, but they will merge into one single department at the start of Winter term, 2023. This also means that 24 Department managers, many of whom have worked at the University for nearly a decade, could be let go, while 8 remain to manage the newly merged departmental structure.

The 2013, Shared Service for the University of Oregon report, despite its inclusion of several concerning sentiments and statements about cutting costs, was still somewhat ambiguous in regard to its motivation behind implementing shared services. Now the motivation is clear: cut costs and raise profits by any means necessary.

Talking Union

Joe Hill — Sat, 01 Oct 2022 00:00:00 -0700

The fundamental truth of all human history is our striving towards ever greater freedom, prosperity, and justice. In the history of our own country, this is embodied by everything from John Brown’s attempted slave uprising in 1859, to the national protests that occurred during the Occupy movement to today, where a nationwide unionization movement is gaining momentum. But why unionize? What is the point? Simply put, to unionize is to push for economic democracy, to assert our voices as working people and to gain control over our lives.

Then, what is economic democracy? We have all heard of political democracy, as that is what we would call the institutions upon which this country is founded. A democratic policy is one in which the polis, or people, are heavily involved within the affairs by which their society is governed. Similarly, a democratic economy is one in which the workers, those who create a product through their labor, are heavily involved in the governing of their work. Just as our republic is organized into a body of representatives, our workplace can be democratized so that we may better determine the conditions of our labor.

Well, you might say, this whole “democratically organized workplace” thing seems nice, but is there any evidence that it actually works? In fact, there are many successful examples of this alternative method of organization. For instance, you may have seen terms such as “employee run” or “co-op” given to certain forms of enterprise. Mondragon corporation in Spain, for instance, is a large worker cooperative which manages to compete well with more traditionally run businesses while also providing to the workers who run a far greater compensation for their labor. Or take a more local example in the Hoedads Reforestation Cooperative, a Eugene based collective formed with the goal of reforesting clearcut areas, advocating for environmentalism and feminism, and experimenting with alternative economic structures. While the HRC is now dissolved, for a time they were the largest worker-run cooperative in the United States. These are examples of workplace democracy in action, proving that such an idea is not a pipe dream, but something that was pursued successfully in this very town! A workplace democracy entails that the dictatorship of the bosses and shareholders is replaced by a bottom-up structure of organization, where the people who (I daresay) actually do the work are the ones who determine what they are working towards. This may seem like a daunting task, one which would necessitate the overturning of our whole societal structure to even begin to realize. As shown by Mondragon and the HRC, this is actually not such an impossible task. We needn’t think of pulling down the whole structure right here and now, but merely of planting the seeds for what will come after. Through cracks in the pavement grass will grow.

How is that relevant to our situation here, at the University of Oregon? There has been an ever-growing call among the student workers of University Housing to unite and establish for themselves a union. This aspiring organization of student workers, calling themselves the UO Student Workers, have already put forward their grievances in a post on Instagram: that it fails to pay them a liveable wage; it fails to pay what little it does on a frequent enough interval; it charges them for meals which they once received for free, and insufficient training for new hires, in addition to many others. Their solution to these issues is to unite into a collective body which has the bargaining power to speak on even terms with the company. In essence, they are choosing to contest the undemocratic rule of the bosses with the democratic power of the workers.

Workplace democracy is therefore a logical extension of unionization. The two are simply different places on the same path. The creation of workplace democracy solidifies any achievements made by the union at the bargaining table and opens the path for more radical changes, such as worker self-management and a more equitable distribution of profits made by the business. The workplace becomes more than a place where people trade hours of their lives in return for the money they need to survive. It becomes a forum for individuals to contribute something to their community and to their fellow workers.

For student workers, this is an especially important point. Workplace democracy ceases to be a mere theoretical possibility. It becomes a reality which they have experienced, a tangible system that they can advocate for in the undemocratic workplaces they move to. College students have been the locus of many-a-great societal change in the past, and they have the opportunity here to do so again. Rather than the workplace being a source of exhaustion and depletion, the workplace can serve as an infusion of radical vitality, ensuring that a good portion of the campus’s students remain politically active and driven. They could even potentially serve as the basis for a more democratic form of university governance.

However, these ambitions cannot cloud the realities of present action. The most pertinent goals of a student union at the University of Oregon must first and foremost be to better the conditions of the student workers: the improvement of wages, an extension of allowed working hours for those who need it, adequate training for new hirees, a shorter pay period, and tuition reductions for workers are all vital demands which must be addressed. Only once student workers know that their physical situation is secure can they be mobilized to greater and more ambitious projects.

Throughout history, college students have served as the catalyst for radical change in their societies. Politically active and yet still unburdened by too many of the immediate concerns of life, they are critical for any radical movement’s success. This is doubly true for student workers, as they must make their voices not just heard on campus, but in their workplaces as well. With the crippling worker shortage affecting University Housing, they are more dependent than ever on the few students they have managed to hire on. This provides a golden opportunity for us to assert our rights, to remind them who makes the meals, manages the paperwork, and really does the work around here. Without us, this whole structure collapses. If we all left work tomorrow, the University would grind to a halt!

So let us unionize, and take steps towards democratizing our university! Unionize, to better share the fruits of our labor! Unionize, for prosperity today and democracy tomorrow! Let our rallying cry be “All for one, one for all! United we stand, divided we fall!”

Tourism and the Colonial Gaze

Serbal Vidrio — Sat, 01 Oct 2022 00:00:00 -0700

Young children stretch makeshift ropes across the pothole-scarred dirt road, bringing our SUV to a halt. The driver passes one of the children a piece of candy, which is eagerly grabbed before the rope falls slack. This scene is repeated every few minutes during the long, bumpy ride through the stiflingly hot desert. It’s so sweltering that I can’t imagine standing by the road for hours under the meager shade of a cactus waiting for cars to pass to exact tribute—a piece of candy here, a water bottle there. Yet when we pass through the occasional dusty settlement, all red earth and lean-to houses made of dried strips of cactus, children, and adults alike come running with hands outstretched, or else offering colorful woven bags or baskets of cactus fruit on sale for a pittance. On the long return trip, we are again stopped by repeated roadblocks, only these ones are of cars, and the men emerging from the shade don’t take candy.

This is La Guajira, one of Colombia’s poorest states, a desert peninsula jutting into the Caribbean. It is home to the Indigenous Wayuu people, nomads of the desert interior. Despite being one of the most populous Indigenous groups in Colombia, a long history of government neglect and the violence of the drug trade have taken their toll on the Wayuu. The Wayuu continue to face widespread discrimination at the hands of those they call alijuna, “those who damage,” meaning non-Indigenous outsiders. Unsurprisingly, given such adverse conditions, the Wayuu have had to resort to extorting the cars that pass through their reservations on their way through the desert. Given my own Jewish background, it’s not hard for me to recognize that people must make the most of the conditions they are forced into; they do what they must to survive because society has failed to offer them viable alternatives. When “those who damage” run the show, it should come as no surprise when their victims retaliate in the ways they can.

For all its problems, La Guajira is home to several popular tourist sites. Cabo de la Vela, a Wayuu fishing village on the northwest coast of the peninsula, is famous for its pristine Caribbean beaches, while Punta Gallinas is known as the northernmost tip of South America. Both destinations and other sites in the area are mobbed by hordes of tourists year-round. Like in other touristy regions, the contrast between the wealth of visitors and the poverty of Wayuu locals is jarring. I’ve seen this contrast many times before, but never in such stark relief as in La Guajira.

In the May 2022 issue of The Student Insurgent, I published an account of a spring break trip I took to the town of Huautla de Jiménez in the Sierra Mazateca of Oaxaca, Mexico. Ever since the renowned curandera María Sabina first initiated a Westerner in the sacred psilocybin mushroom ceremonies of the Mazatec, the town has been a mecca for tourists and hippies from around the world seeking the magic mushroom. Huautla is not the only such place; numerous Indigenous communities have witnessed the profanation of customs and beliefs they hold sacred following the explosion of tourism as a global industry since the mid-twentieth century. The emergence of tourism has given those with the requisite money the privilege to insert themselves in cultural contexts deemed “exotic” and alluring, opening places like Huautla to throngs of clueless tourists.

In the piece on Huatla published last spring, I asked what it means to be a tourist to such places as an outsider with no connection to the community. My visit to La Guajira raised the same ethical questions as my trip to Huautla. I was struck by this when I visited a place outside Cabo de la Vela called Kamaica (“lord of the things of the sea”), a mound of gravely stone rising above the coastline a few kilometers north of the village. Kamaica is a sacred site for the Wayuu, a place where the souls of the dead circulate and the living make pilgrimage to pay homage to their ancestors. When I visited, Alijuna tourists were walking all over it, ascending the hill to the shrine at the top to watch the sunset over sacred land to which we lack any connection. Wayuu people sat shaded under rustic structures on the beach below selling water and snacks to passing tourists, but I saw none on the sacred mountain that is ancestrally theirs.

Antiguan novelist Jamaica Kincaid’s 1988 book A Small Place presents a damning portrait of tourism in her home country, often touted by travel agencies as an island paradise—but one from which Antiguans themselves have no escape. This contradiction recalls a Colombian saying: “Colombia is proof that God made heaven and the devil hell.” Like in La Guajira, the tourists who clutter the sunny beaches of Antigua are ignorant of the dire social and environmental problems that plague the island and which they help to exacerbate, effectively recreating the colonial situation from which “small places” like Antigua never truly escaped. By doing so, the rich and the powerful—and most of the time, the White—impose themselves on impoverished, marginalized, and non-White people whose lands and lives they penetrate with their gaze. Tourism is not only colonial, then, but also voyeuristic.

Anarchist anthropologist Pierre Clastres presents a similar portrait of tourism in a 1971 essay called “The Highpoint of the Cruise.” In this parodic fiction, a cruise ship full of American tourists disembarks in an Indigenous village somewhere in the Amazon. The exciting fantasy of “authenticity” grips them; they rush for their cameras to take carefully composed photos of the inhabitants of the village, gesturing for them to remove their pants and shirts and to pose naked or don their ceremonial regalia. One tourist, looking past the elaborate figurines and headdresses displayed for sale to people like him, asks for the bow and arrows that their owner uses for hunting. The hunter scowls, insulted, but then gives it some thought and pitches a high price. The tourist concedes—anything for an authentic souvenir! This type of staging of an artificial “authenticity” that positions a place and its people as pristine and unchanging is characteristic of colonial tourism, especially at the interface between non-Indigenous and Indigenous people. The only aspect of the story that strikes me as unrealistic is that the tourists ask to take photos.

How different are the places I’ve enumerated above from popular tourist sites that many Americans dream of traveling to? Although local circumstances differ, there are clear parallels: tourism has brought many of the same types of harm to these different places. A White tourist in Hawaii sunbathing on the beach or hiking the Kalalau Trail is as complicit in histories of colonial exploitation as any hippie looking for mushrooms in Huautla de Jiménez. Tourism the world over is an industry of complicity.

For as critical as I’m being here, I want to nuance the picture a little. When grappling with the ethics of tourism, there is a comparison to be drawn with the question of cultural appropriation. When is it appropriate to borrow from a culture not your own; when is it appropriate to visit a place not your own? For me, both questions come down to respect. If you can visit a place with respect for the land and those who call it home (and with their permission), it’s not categorically wrong to do so. The problem lies in the fact you can’t count on most people to go to the trouble of putting in the work of respectful understanding, hence the multitudes of non-Indigenous American tourists walking all over Hawaii without any awareness or respect for its Indigenous people and their history. And hence people like me paying bribes to pass Wayuu roadblocks through impoverished and polluted reservations en route to sacred sites along pristine Caribbean shores.

I left La Guajira with an ambiguous feeling. Not knowing what I might find there when I set out—and I found a great deal that I didn’t expect—I returned glad to have seen and learned much during my visit. On the other hand, I was more aware than ever of being one in a long line of White tourists to visit with little understanding of its history and of the people who inhabit it, bringing little else but handouts of candy and water bottles.

Was it wrong for me to visit La Guajira as a tourist at all? Not necessarily. Should I have done more to learn about the land and its people before going? Certainly. Was it, ultimately, disrespectful for me to go? I’m not sure. No one suggested that it was and there was no clear indication that anyone I met would have preferred that I and others like me not be there. But do the Wayuu have any choice but to accept the unsolicited presence of alijuna on their land? Impoverished and marginalized as they are, they may now have no choice but to play their part in a tourism industry designed by and for those who damage. I am presented with the same dilemma that confronted me in Huautla: how consensual is manufactured consent? I don’t have a good answer, but it’s a question we should all take seriously.

Consider these reflections a call to self-awareness should you set your sights on some “exotic” locale. Things aren’t always what they seem; one person’s heaven is another’s hell.

Art by Misandry

Weaving Resistance

Serbal Vidrio — Sat, 01 Oct 2022 00:00:00 -0700

The Kamëntsá are an Indigenous community of southwest Colombia whose ancestral homeland is the Sibundoy Valley, a mountain basin straddling the Andean highlands to the west and overlooking the vast Amazonian lowlands to the east. It is fitting that such a unique geographical position, situated between two vastly different ecological and cultural worlds, should be home to a people as unique as the Kamëntsá, who fuse Andean and Amazonian cultural elements, speak a language unrelated to any other, and whose forms of artistic and philosophical expression are singular in the world. There is no place like the Sibundoy Valley, and there is no people like the Kamëntsá, whose lifeworld astonishes with its depth, beauty, and embodied wisdom.

Weaving Resistance: Arts and Artesanías of the Kamëntsá is an exercise in visual ethnography, bringing together Kamëntsá artforms, fieldwork photographs, and descriptive text contextualizing these diverse visual elements. The graceful contours of a carved wooden mask; the stories told by the sequence of symbols and colors unveiled by the unraveling of a tsömbiach (a type of woven belt with myriad uses); the warm folds of a capisayo (a traditional poncho)—all have their place in Kamëntsá culture, bespeaking deep meanings that tie the people to their homeland and their ancestors.

The Kamëntsá inhabit a relational world in which people, their creations, and the natural world cannot be considered in isolation, but are understood as always existing in relationship with one another. In the shapes, patterns, colors, and symbols of Kamëntsá art—and in their music, poetry, and philosophy—live the natural beings from which their cultural life is inseparable: the gardens, forests, rivers, plants, mountains, minerals, spiritual beings, and animals with which the Kamëntsá have always coexisted. This exhibit encourages viewers to ask what it means to live, like the Kamëntsá, in relationship with the natural world instead of seeking mastery over it—the unfortunate habit of our own society.

Like so many Indigenous communities in Colombia and elsewhere, the Kamëntsá face serious threats to the cultural and territorial autonomy which, as custodians of their ancestral territory, is rightfully theirs. The experience of colonialism past and present, coupled with extractive economic processes such as industrial mining, government development projects such as roads cutting through Indigenous territory and protected areas, the violence of the drug trade, and inefficient and corrupt government bodies—all these forces threaten Kamëntsá lives, livelihoods, and dignity. If the viewer should take anything from this exhibit, however, let it be that the Kamëntsá continue to resist, to remake and reclaim through their vibrant artforms and vital traditions what is theirs.

You can visit Weaving Resistance: Arts and Artesanías of the Kamëntsá in Knight Library Room 112, in the West Wing near administration. The exhibit will be up until June 2023.

Worth More Standing: CJL Joins Local Forest Defense Effort to Save Flat Country

Climate Justice League — Sat, 01 Oct 2022 00:00:00 -0700

Climate Justice League Joins Fights for Forest Defense

On October 8th, Cascadia Wildlands and Oregon Wild hosted a flotilla on the McKenzie River to oppose the pending Trump-era “Flat Country” timber sale in Oregon’s Willamette National Forest.

The vast majority of the proposed logging in this sale would be in mature and old-growth forests with over 1,000 acres of clear-cut style logging, even though President Biden this year ordered his administration to prioritize conserving these forests as a crucial climate protection.

Within the Flat Country sale are the headwaters of the McKenzie River, which flows down from the Cascade Mountains to provide fresh drinking water to hundreds of thousands of residents in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. In addition to the benefits this old forest provides for clean water, clean air, and wildlife, this is a special place for outdoor enthusiasts across Oregon. The McKenzie River is a popular destination for fishing, rafting, drift-boating, and kayaking, and we can’t wait to celebrate its natural beauty with you while we demand its protection.

Some members of Climate Justice League joined over 100 “kayaktavists” on the river to rally against the old-growth logging sale. Climate Justice League has been involved in forest defense efforts for several years and has repeatedly partnered with Cascadia Wildlands and other local organizations doing this work.

Check out what some of our members had to say about the flotilla!

“The flotilla event was a great way to start the fall term for CJL! It was an amazing experience to get to spend the day with such experienced organizers as well as see our own CJL members stepping up into volunteer positions the day of! Working to save the old growth forest and land proposed in the flat country timber sale is important and I would love to see more folks from CJL getting involved!” -Abbey

“In case you didn’t know, the Flat Country Timber Sale is set to log over 2,000 acres of older forest near the headwaters of the McKenzie river. Not only will the forest be affected, but so will the watershed that we kayaked and paddle boarded on during this flotilla! I think it is unacceptable and so do the 100+ people from our community who showed up for this amazing action!! It was great to collaborate with such awesome people and hear about what’s to come!” -Jazz

“I participated in the Flotilla to oppose the sale of Flat Country because the destruction of the land is horrible for the ecosystems and the indigenous peoples of the land. Participating in the rally showed me that there is a wonderful community of people who also oppose these environmental injustices.” -Soleil

Quiet Quitting and YOU

ch0ccyra1n — Fri, 30 Sep 2022 00:00:00 -0700

*This is the first of the web exclusive articles written for exclusive publication on The Student Insurgent’s website

Introduction

Elitist publications are scaremongering¹ to the bosses of the world about “Quiet Quitting”, a new term that asserts working for your scheduled hours - and nothing more - is a problem. This article will provide a brief introduction to this concept, then explain why it’s dumb as fuck.

The Facts About Quiet Quitting

The first known mention of “quiet quitting” was on Twitter² as a suggestion for a doctoral studies paper on the greatest leadership challenge we face today
Gallup has been polling on workplace engagement for years³, and found that workplace engagement dropped by a whopping 4% since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020. This is a similar timeframe to The Great Resignation
quiet quitting describes several different phenomena with many different connotations. As a result, it’s an indescriptive, confusing term.

Quiet Quitting Actually is…

Slowdown⁴, a deliberate reduction of effort put into work in order to collectively bargain for better conditions
Work-to-rule⁵, a type of slowdown that fundamentally covers the same ground as quiet quitting (working the bare minimum)
Setting boundaries for yourself instead of overworking, an important part of avoiding burnout and work-life balance.

Conclusion

As we can see, quiet quitting is simply the ruling class villainizing collective bargaining strategies and basic mental health. Because of the effectiveness of quiet quitting, the ruling class are doing everything in their power to dissuade workers from taking matters into their own hands and using this effective tactic to improve their lives. One particularly disgusting example is a video of Kevin O’Leary, chairman of O’Shares ETF and one of the “investors” on Shark Tank. In this video he implies that workers with a sense of self-respect are the most despicable thing imaginable, with a similar vibe that one might get at a “captive audience” meeting used to thwart workers from forming a union at their workplace. All the same scare tactics with “predictions” that are actually thinly-veiled threats. So should you quiet quit? Absolutely! Not only does it seem to piss-off the ruling class, but it improves mental health by setting boundaries, and states stronger than with words that you’re worth more than company time.

Footnotes

Visiting author gives talk on their book ”Abolition of Law”

Solidarity News — Mon, 12 Sep 2022 00:00:00 -0700

Syndicated with Solidarity News

About two dozen folks took over the UO Law center lounge on Friday Sept. 9 to escape the wildfire haze descending on Eugene and hear Nevada give a talk on their book Abolition of Law. The Abolition of Law event, hosted by UO’s Radical Organizing and Activist Resource (ROAR) center, was originally planned to take place at the Urban Farm, but chaotic climate conditions forced local organizers to occupy whatever indoor public space they could raid.

Guest speaker Nevada spoke as a resident of Minneapolis concerning the 2020 George Floyd uprising from its point of genesis. They dug deep to offer critical insights about how the uprising unfolded and many of the tactical innovations the rebellion initiated. Their book “The Abolition of Law” looks at many theoretical and concrete aspects of the rebellion, while explaining in detail the chronology of how actions and ideas developed.

Now two years on, Nevada has started to explore many of the social conditions surrounding the Minneapolis scene. This has led them to become familiar with what is known as the “side show.” Side shows are informal gatherings where people bring their cars to do burnouts, drag races, and just display their vehicles without any formal organization. This space where the formality associated with the driving and licensing of vehicles is relaxed or abandoned reveals a critical insight into one the key innovations developed during the 2020 rising.

People were able to effectively loot big box stores like Targets and Wal-Marts in Minneapolis. These large capitalist structures are often positioned at the periphery of urban areas and also seated in large parking lots that insulate them from mass foot traffic. In Minneapolis, people were able to overcome these obstacles to redistribution through the massive and rapid use of vehicles. In this way some of the most exploitative commercial entities on the American landscape were sacked by communities who had suffered most from the big box hollowing of the central urban landscapes.

Nevada also detailed how open spaces adjacent to police precincts made it impossible for police to fully disperse people and acted as rallying points that continually put pressure on besieged precincts. Additionally, once people threatened these police spaces, police had no capacity to respond to mass redistribution occurring across the urban landscape.

On a theoretical level Nevada has dived deep into how the uprising was eventually muted and the rhetoric authorities employed to trigger a mass response in mostly white liberals and leftists. They made special note of how the Minnesota Governor Tim Walz blamed white supremacists for invading Minneapolis and blamed them for looting. All the while it was clear that communities were rising against a system structurally built upon white supremacy.

Nevada was deeply struck by how this rhetoric instantly turned the tables on people actively engaged in rebellion and even pitted leftist elements against the continuing mass action. This led them to the insight that many liberals and leftists were, “More about fighting individual white supremacists, than fighting a system of white supremacy.” People began to organize to protect property and enforce curfew. This form of self policing intertwines the concepts of private property and white supremacy brings about an anti-abolitionist structure. In the end an anti-racist narrative was appropriated and mobilized to protect a racist system.

Nevada has taken this into the exploration of the concept of race treason. In this idea the intrinsic connection between whiteness and property is the central mechanism to be dismantled. This of course brings about heavy theoretical questions concerning radical redistribution, which is one of the most pressing issues in the radical left.

The conclusion that Nevada has come to is that however uncomfortable it may be, the day-to-day navigation of race tension is a continuing experience of resistance against white supremacy. Alternatives to the existing systems of oppression include self regulation through feedback and communication. This is in contrast to the self-policing and law which are static moral judgment. Self regulation is the norm in non-political, or what Nevada calls “ante-political” (yes ante, not anti), spaces such as the side show. This atmosphere of “takeovers and self regulation” propagates a transformation of the world in real time. Nevada does recognize that such, “inner phenomenon as a solution can be a dangerous illusion.” But they also see the value of gaining the time and space to make an autonomous decision.

For Nevada, the existing framework of political organizing is white and for this reason the issue of race treason becomes truly urgent. When the institution of private property becomes threatened many people become instant reactionaries. When looking at the place of white abolitionists involved in the process of dismantling white supremacy it must be recognized that, “we are not the protagonists, the goal is not to make us roadblocks.”

Nevada’s “Abolition of Law” is currently sold out, but Firestorm bookshop is working to restock it.

A New Website for a New Era: Insurgent 2.0

Website Committee — Thu, 01 Sep 2022 00:00:00 -0700

Introduction

With the reorganization of The Student Insurgent over the course of the summer including the formation of this committee, it felt right to create a new website. This article discusses what to expect going in, and the philosophy that got to version 2.0 of the website, which is now live as of the publishing of this article.

Don’t worry about the old site! You can still access version 1.1.5 (the last version of the old site) at https://old.studentinsurgent.org , although it will not be updated other than security updates and will exist as an archive until further notice.

Accessibility

In order to fulfill our mission to agitate and educate the student body by addressing issues that are often marginalized, it was quickly realized that we failed to live up to accessibility standards that would ensure that disabled comrades are able to enjoy our work. To remedy this, Insurgent 2.0’s dark mode scores AA in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) in terms of contrast, and all non-text content such as images has alt-text, a form of description to ensure accessibility for those using a screen reader.

Safety

To ensure that we don’t cause harm to readers, all articles which we feel could be potentially triggering have a content warning. Before the article is displayed, a list of the possible triggers is provided and readers must give their consent (by marking a checkbox) to access the article.

Consistency

To ensure a consistent experience with the website, Insurgent 2.0 has been created according to a style guide that specifies information about fonts, colors, and logo usage, among other things.

Minimalism

Ultimately, we wanted this website to be something that people want their work to be put on. As a result, we’ve prioritized making the website pleasing to look at and easy to use. To do this, we chose to take a minimalist approach while still being feature-complete. Usage of JavaScript is avoided as much as possible.

Insurgent ♥️ Free & Open Source Software

In the interest of providing greater transparency and upholding our anti-authoritarian values, all source code of Insurgent 2.0 is Free & Open Source Software (FOSS), meaning that you can do whatever you want with the source code as long as you follow the terms in the permissive MIT License. It’s available on GitLab at https://gitlab.com/insurgentuo/insurgent. In addition, we utilize other FOSS projects, such as Hugo for content management, and NextCloud for our calendar.

Letter from the Editorial Board (September 2022)

The Editorial Board — Thu, 01 Sep 2022 00:00:00 -0700

The Insurgent is back at last, comrades- did you miss us? We missed you! A lot has happened this summer, both in the community at large and within our own community here at The Student Insurgent. It’s time we check back in and discuss our progress since the April and May issues, in light of months of work that drastically altered the publication’s functioning for the better.

As promised, a new editorial board has been fully instated, consisting of eight editorial members and one ombuds position to guarantee well-facilitated meetings and just decision making. The editorial board positions were determined back in May/June of this year with a group vote. These positions will be elected yearly, and elected members can be recalled at any point if group consensus decides that an individual is unfit to represent the Insurgent.

The team we have assembled fills me with great pride and hope that our paper will persevere past the problems that plagued us in years prior. With the new editorial board, consisting of an amazing art editor, a committed creative writing editor, a capable copy editor, a gnarly news and photo editor, an outstanding outreach coordinator, a passionate prison project liaison, a pretty cool production editor (hi, that’s me writing this part -J. Ellis), and a wicked technomancer, we have collectively crafted a new system of production for each issue.

Instead of a model where power inevitably accumulates at the top of the collective, we have designed a new production model that ensures thorough and accurate reporting, thoughtful takes, and the badass content we are known for. Each editor will represent their respective committees - these committees will consist of designated roles and responsibilities that foster cohesion and collaboration across the many facets of the paper, encouraging all modes of participation for interested contributors of all capabilities and capacities. We’ve made style guides, submission guidelines, and codes of conduct for all of the committees that will be made public, in order to strengthen the organization, delegation, and transparency of operations in the collective. Our goal is to ensure that anyone involved in the Insurgent can become empowered to take on leadership roles that constitute strong, well-organized activist networks.

Going forward, we promise to:

Avoid alienating our readers and potential writers
Explore issues that concern the greater campus community
Incorporate the voice of the radical community in our publications
Provide informative political content and powerful creative works
Publish content to our newspaper, website, and social media in a timely manner
Reject all harmful content from publication, especially racist, sexist, or queerphobic content
Represent the diversity of opinions, including contrasting or conflicting opinions, that are present in our community

Summery

The Student Insurgent — Thu, 01 Sep 2022 00:00:00 -0700

Summer 2022 in Review

Outrage over the federal overturning of Roe V. Wade in early summer of 2022 peaked on the night of June 24th. Following the official Supreme Court decision declared the same morning, there was a day of civil unrest at Eugene’s Federal Courthouse where thousands of residents took to the streets to defend reproductive autonomy. Protestors gathered in the company of career politicians, non-profits such as Planned Parenthood, as well as the inevitable presence of pro-life counterprotestors. As night fell over the town, the pussy hats were swapped for black bloc as a small group of about 100 individuals gathered in collective protest at the Dove Medical Clinic on East 11th— a faith-based “pregnancy crisis center” that discourages abortions as health care (boo!).

What unfolded as hours passed was the most intense standoff between Eugene activists and local police since M29 and related solidarity movements in Spring and Summer of 2020. Despite 10 arrests, this action by many regards could be considered, if not quite a success, a step in the right direction for Eugene radicals. Several affinity groups autonomously unified, and despite no prior consensus on tactics, managed to hold off police violence and arrests for almost three hours before the police bludgeoned morale. This skirmish reminded the radical scene in Eugene what it’s capable of, and what we have to improve on in organization and tactics to ensure greater success in future direct actions.

The next day, June 25th, the Revolutionary Women’s Committee (RWC) held a public informational session at Monroe Park to engage the community in topics of reproductive, gender, racial, and economic justice. With about 80 in attendance, several large breakout groups were created, encouraging discussion and networking around these issues. This groundwork helped establish the affinities and alliances necessary for organizing around another contentious issue during an already contentious summer: a series of protests against the World Athletics Championships (WAC) that invaded Eugene in mid-July.

On July 23rd, Eugene Housing and Neighborhood Defense (HAND), RWC, and Stop the Sweeps Eugene organized a teach-in and march resisting neoliberal extravagance in a city that’s neglected a desperate houselessness crisis for years. This demonstration was one of several, as 350 Eugene and Stop the Sweeps both schemed earlier in the week to disrupt increased traffic near campus and spread awareness to their respective issues. The July 23rd action attracted the attention of EPD as a crowd of roughly 50 protestors headed toward the Nike storefront on 6th & Pearl, passing the Riverfront Festival (which disastrously redirected over-promised revenues away from local businesses) and many a complacent passersby. The event crowds gawked at the spectacle before them, a necessary reality check amidst such a falsely manicured image of life in Eugene. It was an overdue interruption to the carefully crafted illusionary brand of liberal recreational paradise that the Tracktown USA spent millions in public and private funds manufacturing.

In further resistance to the corporate grip, events this summer solicited more support around growing social class consciousness and potential for autonomous resource stability in our community. One example of this energy was the revival of the Neighborhood Anarchist Collective’s (NAC) Share Fair, an anti-capitalist free market organized to connect neighbors in need to essential resources. Both the NAC Share Fair and local Starbucks unionization efforts are testament to the growing popularity and need for progressive politics in Eugene. This solidarity is perhaps the result of collaborative seeds planted on May Day 2022, which helped develop a more unified network of local activists, in turn creating greater capacity for political empowerment.

One lesson to be learned from this summer of actions is that resistance in this city is taking many forms. Through political education, direct action, and mutual aid networks, Eugene citizens are steadily empowering themselves via various initiatives that challenge the current political order and foster resilience against the crises capitalism creates. This is reminiscent of the legacy of radical activism in Eugene from the ‘90s and early 21st century, and I dare to say that this spirit has at last returned to our community after decades of hard work from activists old and new in the region. We cannot afford to lose this momentum again, let’s continue building strong, sustainable movements like the many we participated in over Summer 2022.

Admin Strikes Again: The latest victim? The Student Food Pantry

Maggie — Sun, 01 May 2022 14:42:28 -0700

Meme by UO Affirmations

Currently, about 9,000 students a year walk through the doors of the Student Food Pantry. They are greeted by a welcoming student to pick up their free produce, bread, canned goods, frozen meats, milk, eggs, cheese, hummus, coffee, pastas, tofu, peanut butter, cake mix, cooking oil, almost anything one can think of. The pantry currently serves students from multiple schools, and no student will ever get denied access to this food.

Continuously through remote classes, COVID spikes, and inclement weather, the pantry has survived almost entirely by the work of volunteers and student-workers.

The Pantry started out in a small garage in 2011, and over the years has since grown through the work of students and community members and moved into a multi-room space in June of 2020. In the past year, the pantry now has been stocked with reusable water bottles, toilet paper, toothbrushes, soaps, dog and cat food, menstrual products, safer sex supplies, handmade knit hats , and more halal, kosher, vegan, and gluten free groceries. Students have been working on getting more basics, culturally competent foods, and other essentials that the university currently doesn’t provide such as fentanyl testing strips and pregnancy tests.

Historically, the pantry has been funded, operated, and expanded by the work of community members and students at UO. This is now changing. As of July 1st 2022, along with other department changes happening this summer, the administrative department of the Dean of Students will began managing the pantry. This means that the pantry will no longer be run by students and community members.

It is not entirely clear what has all played a role in the transition of the oversight of the food pantry to Admin. One theory is the change in EMU oversight. As of July 1st 2022, Admin now will instead be overseeing the funding of many of the offices in the EMU such as the Student Sustainability Center, Craft Center, KVWA, Outdoor Program and many others. The Food Pantry was ran in partnership of the Student Sustainability Center.

Another contributing factor to the transition could include a new bill (HB 2825) passed in the Oregon legislature in 2021 which requires public universities in Oregon to hire professional staff to help students receive food benefits and implement basic need initiatives on campus. These staff are being placed in the Dean of Students office. Additionally on campus, this past year ASUO has directed funding towards basic needs programs housed in the Dean of Students office, this funding along with the state funding will be used to support the staff and services for students but it is still not transparent what this means for the access to the pantry.

As always, Admin has been able to take control of student-created and ran programs such as Safe Ride being turned into Duck Rides. This transition for the pantry to a program under Admin presents a scary scenario where more regulations, requirements, and bureaucracy are added onto the pantry. This stifles further community developed mutual aid currently happening at the pantry, and most certainly will prevent the pantry from becoming a more radical place to serve the needs of students. Helping meet the needs of students, and any vulnerable population, necessitates a dynamic, flexible, and understanding environment. Institutionalizing community programs often creates the opposite effect. This transition of the pantry is small, but it’s a warning sign for students to keep a watchful eye for possible more advances from Admin on student and community ran programs as the university administration now controls the departments from the EMU.

Alternate Worlds: Against Capitalist Realism

Serbal Vidrio — Sun, 01 May 2022 14:42:28 -0700

Many words walk in the world. … There are words and worlds which are lies and injustices. There are words and worlds which are truths and truthful. … In the world of the powerful there is no space for anyone but themselves and their servants. In the world we want everyone fits. In the world we want many worlds to fit.

— EZLN, “Fourth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle,” 1996.

Systems of oppression have always had one thing in common: the implication, presented as common-sense fact, that the way things are is not only the way they should be, but the way they must be. The core assumption of all ideologies is that the construction of the world they present constitutes an accurate picture of the world as it really is; the image is mistaken for the real.

Capitalist Realism, by Mark Fisher, is a popular book in leftist circles. Even those who haven’t read it may be familiar with its most famous line: “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” The book asserts that, since the fall of the USSR and the subsequent proclamation of “the end of history,” the logics of capitalism and liberalism have manufactured a sense that it is impossible to imagine plausible alternatives to capitalism. Capitalism has learned to disguise itself as an inevitability that stands outside the particulars of history and culture.

Yet despite capitalist ideology’s claim to represent the end of history, cracks are unmistakably beginning to show. With each new crisis of capitalism and failure of liberalism—and we have witnessed many in recent years—these cracks only widen. The fragile contingency of capitalist realism, the depressingly unimaginative premise that there can be no alternative to its status quo, has been increasingly laid bare. What’s more, the real-world consequence of this failure of imagination is to permanently alter global ecologies and irreversibly undermine our futures. If those in the so-called “developed” countries—those most responsible for the climate crisis—don’t soon figure out how to imagine and engage with the world differently, the future will not improve.

If we are to learn to imagine outside the limited bounds of capitalist realism, it must be through dialogue with people who have been silenced and marginalized for centuries by the logics of colonialism and capitalism—two sides of the same coin. Alternative ways to conceive of the possible may be constructed in conversation with cultures whose ways of imagining the world differ radically from those of the colonial and capitalist global core.

The “ontological turn” describes perspectives that depart from traditional notions of culture and instead address questions of being, treating all worlds and ways of being within them as equally real and valid. This turn suggests that we should shift our attention from ways of seeing to ways of being in the world. The difference may seem slight, but there are important implications behind the suggestion that non-capitalist worldviews—which, of course, are the vast majority in the historical and ethnographic record—are just as real and important as capitalist ones.

This is not just a philosophical difference; the cultural inhabitation of different conceptual worlds has real effects on the physical world we all share. To borrow an example from the anthropologist Wade Davis, when Westerners (to generalize for a moment) look at a mountain, they see a pile of rocks, latent mineral wealth waiting to be exploited. When an Indigenous Andean (again to generalize) looks at the same mountain, they see an apu, a spirit embodied by the mountain which protects those it watches over, who in turn have a duty to honor it. This difference in seeing directly translates into a difference in being. The Westerner will upturn the mountain to extract the mineral wealth of the earth, blasting and carving it apart to turn a profit, indiscriminately destroying ecosystems and Indigenous people’s sacred landscapes in the process. The Indigenous Andean, by contrast, knows a very different world, in which one is bound by relations of reciprocity and respect to the landscapes one inhabits.

Numerous other examples of such differences in thinking abound. Where one may see a forest as an abode of spirits and a repository of vital energies, the multinational mining firm, logging company, or coca farmer see latent profit. These differences in belief have tangible and long-term effects on how we live in the world, and it is no coincidence that in the given case, the Western worldview produces a highly unsustainable—and, what’s more, an essentially alienating, exploitative, and vacuous—way of being in the world.

The point is not to idealize non-Western or non-capitalist cultures, nor to suggest that these cultures do not have limits of their own. Instead, these examples demonstrate the possibility of engaging with the physical world in very different ways—far more sustainable, reciprocal, and respectful ways. The challenge now is to make these alternatives clear to people in capitalist societies. These alternatives not only allow people to question capitalism, but to imagine a world without it.

In dialogue with non-Western and non-capitalist cultures, we in the capitalist core can begin to conceive of the other-than-human not just as things to be exploited, but as beings with rights to be respected and to whom we owe responsibilities. Beyond the environment, we should consider what other such cultures have to say about gender, race, and class. Under current globally dominant ideologies, these constructs are systems of oppression and legacies of colonialism. But they don’t have to be. Capitalism and colonial thinking are mutually reinforcing: to challenge one is to challenge the other.

Capitalism thrives on the failure of imagination, on a fatal disbelief in the possibility of alternate ways of being. It requires us to hopelessly submit to its flattening vision of the possible and the real and does all it can to convince us that there are no other options. It is the task of the radical, now as always, to seek out and present alternatives. When, as we increasingly find, the cultures of the global mainstream have none to offer, we may instead find solutions through engaging with the countless cultures whose voices have long been silenced and ignored by virtue of the fact that they suggest viable and vibrant alternatives to the way things are. If we fail to initiate these reflexive dialogues, we may not have to imagine the end of the world at all—we may live it.

Cops Audit Cops?

Eric Howanietz — Sun, 01 May 2022 14:42:28 -0700

Cops off Campus holds their last meeting of Spring Term

UO has begun a process of auditing its campus police force, but for some a hired consulting agency named Twenty First Century Policing (21CP) leaves the fox guarding the hen house. According to Cops off Campus UO, their own community audit on campus has concluded, “Abolition is our conclusion.” The auditing agency 21CP is primarily composed of former police chiefs and administrators. For Cops off Campus the audit that started in January this year hardly comes close to the type of community review board campus organizers have envisioned. Organizers are also worried that the report will appropriate abolitionist language, and most of all UOPD will have the opportunity to edit the report prior to public release. The $110K audit will in no way obligate the UOPD to follow any of its recommendations. Organizers believe a smokescreen of reform now allows campus authorities to move forward on a suite of half measures. Some of these including Community Service Officers, and various acknowledgments glorifying CAHOOTS and aping its best efforts.

Cops off Campus ends the year with its May 25th public meeting by briefing who they are, where they are, and where they want to be. Over the course of the last year the group has transitioned from its previous iteration as Disarm UO into a stronger abolitionist stance of the Cops Off Campus Coalition. Now branded as Cops Off Campus UO (COC), the group takes a strong anti-capitalist position that opposes the prison industrial complex, colonialism, imperialism, patriarchy, and racism.

Their presentation opened with an indigenous land acknowledgement that fed directly into their core mission and seamlessly recognized the historical relationship between stolen indigenous land and policing. Reflecting on the history of COC they showed how the group has periodically released information about UOPD’s negative impact in the community. They have demonstrated how the foundation of UO’s police department is built on a program of privatization subsuming the public university system. And they have emphasized how UOPD was only established in 2011, which obliges meeting participants to easily imagine a campus community without policing.

Most importantly the abolitionist stance of the organization allows it to refrain from reformist efforts and compromises with campus administration. Over the course of the last academic year the group has largely been successful in efforts to underline a problematic relationship between Campus Duck Rides and the UOPD. Campus police had largely asserted control over the ride service (Previously called Safe Rides) and Associated Students of University of Oregon (ASUO) were paying 90% of the Duck Rides budget. This created a situation where student activity fees collected by ASUO were being funneled into the UOPD. It now appears that UOPD will no longer control the ride service in the next budget cycle and Transportation Services will take over control of Duck Rides.

Cops Off Campus ended its final Spring term meeting with a workshop asking participants to brainstorm how they would rather spend the UOPD’s eight million dollar budget.

Greetings From Jane's Revenge

anonymous — Sun, 01 May 2022 14:42:28 -0700

Forwarded from an anonymous trusted source

A warm hello to all readers of The Student Insurgent and defenders of reproductive rights everywhere.

As you may know by now, we are on the verge of losing reproductive autonomy nationwide. This egregious violation of human rights should shock and disgust anyone with the most basic sense of compassion. With a single unappealable decision penned by a handful of unelected, black-robed ghouls, tens of millions of people will no longer be in full control of their own medical choices. For generations, women have been forced to suffer unwanted pregnancies and made to rent out their reproductive capacity in service of patriarchy. We and our rights have been sacrificed on the altar of “the unborn” time and time again throughout history, and history has come knocking once more.

But also in history is our resistance. We have banded together in the past to resist domination by theocrats, fascists, and patriarchs. We will do so again. Just as the Jane Collective in Chicago half a century ago helped women get abortions in secret, we, Jane’s Revenge, will fight to maintain the right that our mothers and grandmothers fought for.

Even though we here in Oregon have codified abortion access, this is not forever, not everyone lives in states that recognize this right, and there are local elements that will attempt to deny us from exercising our autonomy regardless.

We have been shot at, had our clinics bombed, and had our doctors assassinated. The only language that the fascist speaks is violence. The only absolution the theocrat preaches is abuse. The only tool of the patriarch is coercion. At every turn, they deny us our right to self-determination, whether that be making reproductive choices, experiencing the joy of gay love, receiving gender-affirming care, or simply refusing to be in their control. And if you aren’t completely on their side, they will eventually come for you too.

We cannot beg for our rights, nor can we beg for ineffectual leaders to save us. Even in a historically revolutionary city like Eugene, the forced-birthers attempt to sink their claws in, with so-called “pregnancy crisis centers” that lie to vulnerable women in desperate need of care, and brutish, heartless fascists who intimidate and threaten women, doctors, and anyone who doesn’t fit in their disgusting vision for America. They are here. They must be opposed in any way possible.

Jane’s Revenge is not just a group (though we do have cells all over the country) but also an idea. If you are against fascism, you are an anti-fascist. If you are a defender of reproductive rights for all, you are part of Jane’s Revenge. We must do what politicians cannot, and defend ourselves and our autonomy with everything we have. We have already performed direct action against the forced-birther movement. And as long as the shadow of white supremacist theocracy looms over America, we will only escalate. This is not a threat. It is a promise. We invite you to take part, to organize alongside us. We will build a safe future together.

And to those who wish to force births and subservience, to those who want to perpetuate coercion, abuse, and suffering, we only have this to say: If abortions aren’t safe, then neither are you.

For autonomy, for self determination, for joy. Jane’s Revenge Little Lark Memorial Cell

Israel Strikes Again: Restricting Palestinian Press

banzai — Sun, 01 May 2022 14:42:28 -0700

Art by @thosebeyonddrunk

UPDATE: Since the publication of this article, the IOF admitted to Shireen Abu Akleh’s death being the responsibility of their soldiers, but will not charge them for it.

On May 11th, Palestinian-American journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, was fatally assassinated by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF). Unfortunately, Shireen wasn’t the first journalist murdered by the Israeli forces, and it doesn’t look like she’ll be the last anytime soon. At the time of her assassination, Shireen Abu Akleh was wearing a blue vest, with the word “PRESS” clearly labeled across her chest. She was covering a military raid in the occupied city of Jenin.

In the past, when Israel has murdered other well-known individuals, they follow a pattern of rejecting charges and deflecting the blame onto Palestinians. In 2003 British filmmaker, James Miller, was shot by the IOF while filming a documentary in Gaza. Just as Shireen was wearing a vest with the word “PRESS”, Miller was holding a white flag while posing zero threat whatsoever. A similar situation unfolded when Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish, a prominent doctor, was asking the IOF to stop firing at them on live TV; his three daughters were killed by an air strike shortly after. In each of these cases, Israel has denied the fact that they killed innocent individuals. In the cases of the journalists, Shireen Abu Akleh and James Miller, the IOF went as far as blaming Palestinian freedom fighters for their deaths. These claims have repeatedly been proven false. The Israeli government has a well-documented history of blaming Palestinians for the deaths of innocent people caused by the IOF. Not only were these journalists, filmmakers, and children innocent, they were also physically showing that they weren’t putting anyone at risk.

The responses we’ve seen globally are rather interesting; some nations seem to not care. Other nations have adamantly asked Israeli officials or the International Criminal Courts to push forward on an investigation. On May 23rd, Palestine officially put in requests to the ICC to formally investigate Shireen’s death. The news publication that she worked for, Al-Jazeera which is based out of Qatar, is also requesting Israel to investigate her tragic death.

To some surprise, the United States has also spoken up and expressed that they are expecting an investigation. Many find hypocrisy in this call though—for decades the United States has been funding Israel’s occupation and settlement of Palestinian indigenous lands. The United States is calling for an investigation but as they still provide over $3.8 billion in military funding to Israel, annually. Amongst all of this, President Joe Biden is expected to visit Jerusalem around the end of June.

Time Magazine came out with an article titled Israel’s Response to Shireen Abu Akleh’s Death is a Problem. No shit it’s a problem. Not only was Israel in violation of international law by killing a journalist, but they were also quick to falsely accuse Palestinians of killing her. Now they’re refusing to investigate her murder. According to the Israeli news publication, Haaretz, Israel’s military investigation committee has decided that if they investigate her death, it will only cause an opposition within Israeli society.

As I am writing this, it has been almost three weeks since Shireen Abu Akleh’s passing and still nothing has been done or accomplished for her to achieve any sort of justice. Her family have made statements, Al-Jazeera has made statements, and thousands have flooded into the streets of major cities across the globe, calling for some sort of justice. All of this, yet still no sense of justice is on the horizon. Since the turn of the century, 7 journalists and filmmakers have died at the hands of the Israeli Occupation Forces. To Israel, and much of the international community, the IOF is known as the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). In all 7 of these murders, none of these individuals posed any sort of threat to the wellbeing of Israeli citizens. In all 7 of these murders, the Israeli “Defense” Forces played an offensive move when they decided to carry out the assassinations of these journalists. In no way were these attacks defensive.

Shireen’s murder is just the most recent example of Israel’s efforts to restrict Palestine from getting a fair and accurate representation in the media. Shireen would show up on millions of televisions regularly, reporting on the regular atrocities committed in Palestine. When oppressed and occupied people don't have their sides of the conflict represented, the oppressors are one step ahead and only furthering their oppressive efforts. Israel’s violent occupation of Palestinian land has taken the lives of too many innocent people. How many more until we realize enough is enough? May 15th, Al-Nakba day, marked 74 years of this colonialistic settlement. With Israel’s occupation not showing any signs of ending any time soon, it’s more important than ever to listen to Palestinians and their stories.

John Bellamy Foster: State of the Revolution

Eric Howanietz — Sun, 01 May 2022 14:42:28 -0700

One of the nation’s leading socialist thinkers and a key voice in the development of social ecology, John Bellamy Foster talks to the Student Insurgent about surviving capitalism, social transformation, and the importance of radical student uprisings.

“We are in a very unstable period,” says John Bellamy Foster as a zoom call warbles in and out of sync giving his voice that delayed synthesizer tone of a malfunctioning robot. For many this statement would not be a stretch to claim but Foster consistently interweaves scientific reality and historical citation into whatever assertions he offers. His replies to most questions are often long winded to say the least, but they contain the more important and distinctly creditable character of being exhaustive. Over his 35-year tenure at the University of Oregon, Foster has conspicuously been at the heart of many of the most dramatic movements in ecology and radical environmentalism. Almost the entire historical arc of what has become known as the eco-terrorist movement has developed in proximity to the ideas of social ecology and environmental socialism he helped establish. His development of Marx’s Ecology in the early 2000’s was a turning point in radical thought and for many addressed what he describes as the “ecological rift of capitalism.” Now in semi-retirement at UO, Foster still teaches Marxist Sociological Theory and Earth System Crisis, providing one of the few academic spaces where one can unravel the secrets of that ubiquitous Penguin Classics copy of Marx’s Das Capital. As a badge of honor, he consistently boasts of being on a right-wing list of the most dangerous professors in America.

The reality that Foster presents for us is not one of ambiguity. The most worrying reference he offers is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, which he notes was so dire in its predictions that its public release was largely edited by participating governments. The first draft for policy makers was leaked and is now publicly available on the Monthly Review website, a major Marxist sociological journal of which Foster is editor. In the leaked IPCC report a scientific consensus agrees that a systematic transformation of social and productive capacities must occur. It says that capitalism is unsustainable, socialist reorganization is probably required, and a transition towards a low energy economy will be unavoidable.

For Foster this confirms that socialism is the solution to the climate crisis. But just as the complexities of the climate crisis are unfolding we are now forced to deal with a revived threat of nuclear annihilation. It would be disingenuous not to call the American intervention in Ukraine a proxy war with Russia, and with US military aid to Ukraine exceeding Russia’s annual military budget we are without doubt in a period of dramatically escalating tensions. This second layer of global instability has put humanity on a knife’s edge and the future dynamic of socialism may be that of survival socialism in the wake of a collapsing capitalist hegemony.

Even with such a dire outlook, Foster sees points of partial successes amid the constant repression of an imperialist world system. Often any experiments of alternative economic and/or political systems are attacked by neo-liberal globalization. He expresses hope for Venezuela but recognizes that it is under siege from capital. The majority of Venezuelans have seen improved conditions, developed resiliency to sanctions, and support their socialist government. Much like Cuba this begs the question, why are they so effective at resisting capitalist hegemony? For Foster this implies that power has been distributed to the previously impoverished majorities of those countries. In many ways this has made the revolution irreversible, and he says “once one gives power to the people they will defend it.” Often holding views contradicting the western media narrative, he also cites dramatic progress in China, the incredible popularity of its government, the higher degree of political participation Chinese people have compared to the American political process. “The ability to elect Biden or Trump is not a sign of Democracy,” Foster wryly comments.

Though one might find points to disagree on here, there can be no denial that there are alternative economic and political systems other than the dominant global capitalist hegemony. Such qualitative differences become apparent in instances like the World Wildlife Reports assessment that Cuba is the only sustainable country on Earth.

From a more grass roots outlook Foster sees the Black Lives Matter movement as the most promising recent social development. He is quick to cite how working-class people crossed the color line to participate in the George Floyd uprising and this kind of mobilization was truly threatening to those in power. Ultimately Biden’s reaction to BLM was an 11% increase in spending on police and prisons. “There is no question that means repression,” says Foster.

During the pandemic the development of what has been termed the “great resignation” and service workers unionization has opened the door for what looks like a broader strategy of refusal and obstruction amid the capitalist core. And despite a temporary lull in the climate change movement, people below 30 are angry about the loss of their future, and are prepared for the type of mobilization necessary to address this issue. What Foster most succinctly touches on is that those in power are most fearful of such mass mobilizations. “A mobilized population will demand other things,” and he is quick to note how American and British mobilization during WWII created dramatic shifts in power when popular demands weren’t met after the war (this might be called the Churchill effect).

Previous pitfalls that created second class citizens or sold supposed economic equality between unequal participants should be recognized as the fallacies they are. Foster has no doubt that the ruling class is fully prepared to take out the knives. He goes back to Fredrich Engels who defined the various calamities of the working class as a system of, “Social Murder.” Only the broadest most unified movements possible will ensure peaceful change. But with the social and ecological circumstances we find ourselves in, this will be the most immense struggle humanity has ever seen, no matter the path taken.

Foster admits that much of the advanced Marxist theory courses remaining at UO are a remnant of the student uprisings of the 1960’s. This is also the legacy carried by past journals like the Sociological Insurgent and its bastard inheritor the Student Insurgent. Much of todays UO faculty grew up in a much more conservative period. “If you want a university with critical spaces it’s something students and faculty have to fight for,” says Foster. One of the most radical student movements that could take place on American campuses is a unified revolt for free tuition and elimination of student debt. In such circumstances Foster has no doubt that Marxist theory would see a resurgence in the American classroom. With a wink & nod Foster does not in any way call for student uprisings, revolts, sit-ins, strikes, occupations, or revolutions at UO. But in the waning days of his tenure it can be plain to see the encroachment neo-liberal policies that have negatively impacted faculty hiring decisions and student political power.

John Bellamy Foster is in many ways a previous chapter of UO’s radical legacy. Echo of the Battle of Seattle and the fury of Earth Liberation Front fall not too far from his footsteps. And from him come so many of the ideas of a continuously expanding anti-globalization and radical ecological movement. I can think of no better tools to be equipped with while moving into this uncertain period of global climate crisis.

Male Entitlement Permeates Every Facet of a Woman's Life

Rosie — Sun, 01 May 2022 14:42:28 -0700

While the recent information about the potential repeal of Roe v. Wade and the state of abortion rights in this country is certainly disturbing, to those who have been paying attention it is not the least bit shocking. Back in August 2021, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barett declined to block a vaccine mandate at Indiana University after a group of students argued that the mandate infringed on their rights to bodily autonomy. While the majority of liberals, shrouded in COVID news, saw this as a sign that Justice Barett may vote in favor of more stringent COVID policies, others saw a much darker threat looming. Judge Barett did not just vote to block a vaccine mandate, she voted against bodily autonomy. This was simply the first indication of her stance on individual freedom, medical rights, and subsequently, abortion. While Justice Barrett may be a woman, her stance on these issues reflects the patriarchal white entitlement that permeates every facet of women’s health care and our rights to bodily autonomy.

While this phenomenon certainly exists from the moment of our birth, for most women we become aware of this entitlement as we enter puberty. From the cat-calls we get across the street from men three times our age, to inappropriate touches and stares from our male classmates, we are conditioned to learn that our bodies are not truly our own from a very young age. By the time we are taught about sex education and our changing bodies, we have already been sexualized for years.

When it comes to sex education, rarely we are lucky enough to attend a school that teaches sex is for more than just producing offspring. We are taught that if we are not ready to raise a man’s children, then we are not ready for sex. We are taught that sex is painful, and almost never are we taught about the female orgasm, because our orgasms don’t relate to procreation. Also, teen pregnancy is still too common in the United States, especially in rural areas where sex education is limited or non-existent besides the religious preaching of abstinence until marriage. Access to birth control is already limited in these areas, but now that the Supreme Court has leaked their decision regarding Roe v Wade, a number of states have begun considering bills that would criminalize birth control. According to the Pew: “This month, Idaho state Rep. Brent Crane, Republican chair of the powerful House State Affairs Committee, said he would hold hearings on legislation banning emergency contraceptives and possibly IUDs as well.” We currently live in a world where men who have physically violated women’s bodies have the greatest power to create legislature on women’s bodies (with both Judge Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh having sexual harassment/ assault allegations against them), and while putting more women in positions of power may seem like the easy answer, Justice Coney-Barett is living proof that women, especially white women can still propogate male entitlement and violence.

While one of the most preached arguments for abortion revolves around rape, incest, and other non-consensual situations in which someone might find themselves pregnant, there is still violent male entitlement in forcing a woman to carry a child for any reason, even if it was from a consensual sexual encounter. We are not incubators - we are humans, and this blatant objectification of a woman in favor of a life that does not even exist yet is just another example of how we do not own our own bodies. They have always been property of the patriarchy, and this situation only amplifies our awareness of that fact.

In a previous issue of the Insurgent, I went in depth into the technocratic birthing systems and medical misogyny in the United States. However, those topics have more relevance than ever in a society that forces women to give birth. Many people fail to consider that birth, especially in the United States, places women in incredible danger, including death. The United States has the highest maternal mortality rate of higher GDP countries, due to the routinization of c-sections, and the general surgicalization of the birthing process in the country. Expecting a woman to carry an unwanted child to term can be a death sentence, especially in a country that has no intention of supporting that woman or her child after birth.

This has never been about saving the lives of children. If it was, the U.S. would have social systems in place to support mothers and children after birth. This is, and always has been about, male fucking entitlement.

May Day 2022

Eugene May Day Coalition — Sun, 01 May 2022 14:42:28 -0700

One of the things most abhorrent about Capitalism is the way it not only adorns our bodies in hurt and harm but prevents us from having the time, space, sense of safety, and community support needed to ever dig that poison out of our bodies. Coming together to provide room to breathe and heal is an absolute must for us to survive and process the trauma inflicted on us by fascist and capitalist formations. We dream of solidarity and letting leftists know that many people can and will build power and class consciousness. A coalition of the Neighborhood Anarchist Collective, Eugene DSA, IWW, and the Student Insurgent started discussing and reaching out to other groups in January. This helped make the process collaborative because there was time for people to brainstorm and plan together, and these groups plan to continue in coalition.

On May Day, there was a mix of tabling, spontaneous and planned speeches, workshops, games, art, a reading of The Witch’s Child, spoken word poetry, and live music. Lots of food was provided by Eugene Community Fridge, Food Not Bombs, Burrito Brigade, and Solidaritea, and an untold number of plant starts were distributed by Plant Swap and other community members. Around 300 people showed up, and people walking by learned of the history of May Day and working people from many different leftist tendencies. Many stayed to join in the efforts to build a better world. Adults and children laughed and relaxed while weaving a colorful May pole, and a laughing child wearing an ACAB button and holding a craft red rose popped bubbles a person in black block made by spinning in a circle. Loud punk music played in the middle of downtown. People in cars driving by looked on as if saying “What is going on?” Groups and individuals distributed hundreds of zines and stickers. A group screenprinted “Abolish Prison, Abolish Slavery” on over 75 patches and shirts people brought with them. People sat in the grass talking, reading radical zines, and eating burritos, and there were no disruptions from ideological opponents or from the state.

Our values are not merely political stances to be pursued within electoral, propagandic, and campaign arenas but our every day lived values. Living these values collectively helps them to seep into our bones and build our collective social forms. It felt like a faire and political education. People were there to relax and be together on May Day, to take a collective breath in solidarity and dream of how we can live after capitalism and the colonial state fall.These connections will be necessary in what we can only hope is a very busy Summer. This event wasn’t intend to be a direct action like May Day’s of the past, present, and future because it was designed to be a day of leisurely socializing. Our ability to act and react collectively in the face of ongoing threats will always be dependent on our ability to build trust with and within our community. In times of bravery, knowing you can trust those with you is essential to effective action and organization.

Problematic Artists, Important Art: The Case of Ciro Guerra

Serbal Vidrio — Sun, 01 May 2022 14:42:28 -0700

There is a longstanding and possibly unresolvable debate in art criticism over the importance of distinguishing between art and artist. The school of New Criticism, developed in the mid-twentieth century, sought to isolate works of art as self-contained objects. In 1967 the postmodernist Roland Barthes declared that “the author is dead,” signaling a view of art in which the intentions and biography of the artist are not only irrelevant, but interfere with the viewer’s ability to admire and interpret works of art on their own merit. These are just two expressions of what seems to be the dominant answer popularly given to the question of art vs. artist—that it is at best unnecessary, and at worst childish, to let one’s opinion of the artist impinge on one’s appreciation of the artwork, at least so long as whatever makes the artist questionable is not implicit in the art they produce.

I don’t necessarily take issue with this perspective in every case. There are artists whose work I appreciate yet whose political views or behaviors I disdain (likewise, there are admirable artists who have produced bad art—is that a reflection of their character?). Nonetheless, I don’t think we should always accept the need for a distanced and “objective” view. If you find yourself unwilling or unable to separate your feelings about an artist from the art they produce—particularly if the artist has done harm to people or causes you identify with—then you are under no obligation to second-guess yourself. That being said, I want to trouble the waters a little and ask what happens when problematic people create important art. When it is no longer a question of whether an artwork is simply aesthetically “good,” but of whether it is politically important, how do we negotiate the tension between art and artist?

This piece was originally intended as a review of the Colombian director Ciro Guerra and his work with several Indigenous Colombian communities, with whom he directed three films and a Netflix mini-series. Since first watching his film Embrace of the Serpent (2015) in Colombia a few years ago I have considered Guerra one of my favorite directors, having since seen most of his filmography. So it came as an unpleasant surprise (but maybe it shouldn’t have been) to discover that in 2020, eight women accused Guerra of sexual harrassment and assault in the Colombian feminist periodical Volcánicas. Now, I have no problem accepting Guerra’s probable culpability and dismissing him as just one more in a long list of prominent men who have abused their power in the world of film and entertainment. There is a familiar story here about Guerra, a man with a privileged position in his society and with power and clout in the world of cinema, gaining clemency from justice while his victims are ignored and derided.

At the same time, I believe something has to be said about the films that bear his name. However problematic Guerra may be as a person, his films do something important—and I think that’s true even (maybe especially) if we remove the man from the equation.

Guerra has directed three films that portray several Indigenous Colombian cultures: The Wind Journeys (2009), Embrace of the Serpent (2015), and Birds of Passage (2018); He also worked on a Netflix mini-series called Green Frontier (2019). What I find interesting and admirable about Guerra’s films is that more than accurately portraying the Indigenous cultures they concern, they were produced collaboratively and with the direct involvement and approval of those communities. In these films, Indigenous actors from cultures such as the Wayuu of the Guajira Peninsula, the Arhuaco of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, and the Ocaina, Ticuna, Bora, Andoque, Yucuna, and Muinane of the Colombian Amazon portray themselves and speak their native languages on screen. Additionally, in The Wind Journeys, members of the Afro-Colombian community of San Basilio de Palenque also portray themselves and speak their native Palenquero, the only Spanish-based creole language in Latin America. What is important here is that few other films have ever portrayed these communities and cultures, and those that have may have done so without the participation and consent of the communities themselves— a major problem with Indigenous representation in media, both in the United States and Latin America. That Guerra’s films not only portray these communities, but do so respectfully and cooperatively, is a mark of their originality and an example of how non-Indigenous filmmaking with Indigenous people can be done right.

What needs to be said at this point is that this is a strength of the films that doesn’t depend on Guerra’s character—in fact, I think it’s better if we consider it a strength despite Guerra’s involvement. After all, more people than just the director go into the making of a film, and since we are talking about Indigenous representation, we should focus our appraisal not on Guerra but on the Indigenous communities that the films concern. They are the ones to whom credit belongs for having articulated their Indigeneity in the ways they were able through the means and format available to them. That Guerra had a hand in providing them with those means matters less to me than that they took advantage of the opportunity to do something original and important with it. This is particularly important work at a time at which the issues affecting the Indigenous communities portrayed in the films—from genocide and ecocide to everyday racism, narcotrafficking, and armed conflict—are increasingly pressing, especially considering how little a non-Indigenous audience is likely to know about such issues.

Ultimately, I don’t think there is a one-size-fits-all answer to the question I opened this essay with. Some art can be appreciated in isolation from its artist and some can’t. And sometimes, like in the case of Ciro Guerra, the situation is a little more complicated. I don’t know why Guerra, a non-Indigenous person, decided to make films about Indigenous Colombia. I don’t think his reasons particularly matter. What matters is that the Indigenous communities he worked with instrumentalized the platform they were given to articulate themselves, for the first time, on the big screen and for a global audience. And for that I stand by the value of these films as important pieces of art with political salience. As for Guerra—well, he’s just like the rest of them.

Suicide at UO: An Illusion of Care

Curious Hippo — Sun, 01 May 2022 14:42:28 -0700

Lane County is experiencing an epidemic and not the one you are thinking of; suicide takes someones life every three days here. The population of the University of Oregon is not exempt from this rising problem. Universities nowadays are saying they are extremely forward thinking and progressive, especially when it comes to the mental wellbeing of their students. But, is that really true? How could higher institutions view students with any care beyond a superficial level when all we are is a constant source of endless income? Are university staff showing insincere interest towards their students simply to shield themselves from civil suits? Is all of the suicide prevention and help offered by universities, the University of Oregon in particular, a shallow attempt to cover legal bases instead of truly caring about their students? In an age of litigation against the University, how can UO truly care about their students and staff?

In terms of the university, there is a certain accountability that all institutions are held to. Universities are putting the pressure on young adults whether intentional or not. Introductory level classes are intended to be extremely hard in order to “weed out” the students who should not actually be in the class. How is that acceptable? When students are failing classes the repercussions are academic probation and having to meet with an advisor before registering for next term’s classes. But no one ever stops to ask why. Why did this person, who was successful enough to get into University of Oregon, fail their first term of classes? Based on a 2013 study conducted by the American Psychological Association, depression is the second leading concern in 36.4% of all college students (American Psychological Association). Maybe, if someone looked at these statistics and really thought, they would start to possibly comprehend what is wrong with higher education. College has evolved from a place of higher level learning to a pressure cooker only some are expected to survive. The university has lost sight of the humanity of their students, treating them like a means to an end rather than a human.

A classroom was an environment of learning and fostering creative thinking but now, classrooms at the University of Oregon are another cog in the machine of American capitalism. In America, it is enforced from a young age that there are two paths you can take: one of “success” or the alternative of living life as a so-called burnout. Your success as an adult is determined by the next seventeen years of your life: elementary school, middle school, high school, SATs or ACTs, apply to college, go to college, graduate college, work for the rest of your life. When a place of learning becomes more about being successful than learning, it is no real surprise students get overwhelmed and sometimes want to give up.

Suicide is the second leading cause of death in people ages 15 to 24. While UO has tried to address the problem, all of their attempts have been shallow and lacking preventative care. Some schools are much better at addressing suicide concerns than others, but do any of these schools actually care? We live in a highly litigious society where any wrongdoing is scrutinized under a microscope. Is the University actually trying to prevent suicide or are they trying to prevent involvement of the judicial system? Freshman year, I was identified as a student at risk by the Dean of Students after speaking with a mandated reporter about my struggles. Instead of calling me, I was sent an email saying University of Oregon “policy… requires any student experiencing a situation that…threatens their own safety to complete a suicide risk screening” and you are required to complete the screening within a week of having the email sent (Howard 1). In this letter it said, “if for some reason you do not [complete the screening within one week from receiving this email], it may be necessary to take additional steps to assess your safety,” which according to a psychologist at the counseling center could be anything from a 72 hour psychiatric assessment to a hold on your university account. If the University of Oregon actually cared about the well being of their students, they should not have to threaten them to take the steps they want them to take to keep them safe. It became abundantly clear that this policy was in place to shield the University from lawsuits. They are doing the bare minimum. This letter said a suicide screening is required for any student they believe may be at risk yet, they don’t require sexual assault victims to complete this screening after reporting an incident to the Title IX office. Approximatley 70% of rape and sexual assault survivors experience moderate to severe distress which is a very common precursor to suicidal thoughts and behaviors (Ibid.). Based on a study of rape survivors in America, doctors from South Carolina determined that 33% of female rape survivors contemplate suicide and 13% of women who have been raped actually attempt suicide (Kilpatrick). This does not include women who do not report their rapes, women who do not report their suicidal thoughts or attempts, sexual assault survivors, and men (who already have a higher suicide rate compared to women). So do they really care or is the University just doing what they need to in order to skate by?

Who gets to decide what is considered a threat to a person’s safety and what is not? Clearly people are slipping through the cracks. When doing a search of suicide risk screenings online, they are typically around 3 to 5 questions. If someone has already decided they want to die, will a 5 question screening do anything? Has anyone been helped by those questions and what comes after answering them? I was told that because I was in therapy they were not extremely concerned with coming up with next steps for helping me. It all seemed superficial and if I did not want to cooperate I could have lied or simply not done the screening. I have not received any check ins as to how I am nearly two years later. Even with that letter, I did not receive it immediately, almost as if it was not urgent enough for them to send a letter and inform me of their “care for my well being”. Why send a letter at all if there is not any actual help for me or my peers? It is yet another illusion of care within the university to avoid civic liabilities.

It seems as though things are not done efficiently here at UO because the institution is incapable of seeing students beyond economic gain. It is not a matter of keeping us safe because if it were, a lot more people would have to complete these risk screenings. Genuine care is when resources are actually offered and plans are created for all students, not just ones at risk. It seems as though the University is selfish and only cares about protecting themselves. That is understandable too, but why not be honest about it?

The UO fails to grasp preventive care and even then it is very case by case. Instead of doing a one and done screening, the university could easily more meaningfully check in on their students after having some sort of suicidal behavior or thoughts. At Brown University in Rhode Island, if you are having a mental health emergency, their counseling center will see you within 15 minutes without needing any prior appointment (Brown Counseling and Psychological Services). When I had to complete my risk screening I was sitting in the waiting room of the counseling center for 45 minutes, and I was told it was not a busy day. It is not just a matter of better policy. The University of Oregon needs to make changes in its core to show more compassion towards its students. Prioritize students in life threatening situations, respond in a timely manner, check in with students and keep them informed. All of these things seem so basic, but to a corporate machine, there is no need as long as their reputation stays pure and their hands appear clean. At the University of Oregon suicide prevention is nothing more than an illusion of care to maintain a reputation precluding negligence.

The End of Roe: The Birth of Post-Liberalism

Red Harris — Sun, 01 May 2022 14:42:28 -0700

The end of the protections enshrined by Roe v. Wade appears imminent. After 49 years of precedent, the Supreme Court is poised to roll back the constitutional right to abortion. In the coming weeks, the ruling will be officially issued by the highest court in America, leading to a spate of drastic abortion bans across broad swathes of America. While Roe is already effectively dead and has been since the Texas abortion ban last summer, the official end of a national right to abortion will have grave consequences.

In the leaked draft, Justice Alito outlined his reasoning for overturning nearly five decades of what was considered “settled law”, which, for brevity’s sake, all but nullifies the constitutional right to privacy as well as the concept of “unenumerated rights” (i.e. anything not explicitly outlined in the Constitution). Most worryingly, however, this draft appears to institutionalize the Glucksburg Test, which states that rights must be “deeply rooted in American tradition and history”. Needless to say, this is a judicial time bomb, which will have ramifications spanning everything from LGBTQ protections to racial equality and countless other civil rights.

This is the result of decades upon decades of targeted efforts by the anti-abortion crowd, ranging from concerted electoralist pushes to transform the Republican party into the political juggernaut we see today, to acts of stochastic terrorism to directly harm the capacity of groups to provide reproductive care. The ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson, as this case will be remembered in history books, is the culmination of these efforts. However, it is important to remember that the modern moral conservative movement did not form out of a reaction to Roe, it formed earlier, out of reaction to desegregation and Brown v. Board. And even though reimposing segregation was soon driven off the political table after the civil rights movement, it would be a grave error to assume that the current blend of “Great Replacement” conspiracism and hyperconservative reaction won’t eventually come back to it.

The rejection of liberal values (i.e. democracy, equality, human rights) by the political right wing in America means that we are progressing to an era beyond naive political liberalism, and its ghoulish successor, neoliberalism. This era, of Post-Liberalism, heralds something much darker: the total dominance of cultural, social, economic, and governmental institutions by a minoritarian political faction of far right Christian Nationalists that stage farcical hyper-gerrymandered elections to reinforce their vulgar excuse for legitimacy. All this while public services are gutted and a political elite keep the economically downtrodden divided with nearly ritualistic persecutions of minorities and outgroups. Such a system is not new; it has been similarly imposed in Russia, in Hungary, in India, and many other nations across the world and throughout history, and they inevitably have the same outcome of destitution, corruption, and brutal, crushing repression.

What does this mean for America? Well, nothing good. Even with Roe poised to be overturned, and with broad popular support for maintaining Roe and even codifying the national right to abortion, the Democratic party, in typical fashion, appears utterly impotent and incapable of coming to the rescue. The midterms are still lurching in favor of Republicans, and the 2024 election will almost certainly herald a constitutional crisis that the democratic safeguards in this country are simply not prepared for. Hate crimes, white supremacist domestic terrorism, targeted disinformation, and violent rhetoric are all on the rise. Republican-dominated states have been passing wave after wave of anti-trans laws, anti-“CRT” laws, and “Don’t Say Gay” laws. Among these laws are also “fetal personhood” initiatives, which would charge anyone receiving or aiding in abortion care with homicide, even in cases where pregnancy would be fatal, something far more severe than pre-Roe laws. Many of these states are cracking down on the mailing of abortifacients like mifepristone, which is also used to treat miscarriages, thus leading to further strains on reproductive care.

Of these laws, the worst perhaps are the ones that reach across state lines, charging people who leave for blue state sanctuaries to gain abortion access. Not since the days of abhorrences like the Fugitive Slave Act have states attempted to do this. The instant a woman from Idaho or Texas or Missouri is charged for entering Oregon or New Mexico or Illinois for the purposes of getting an abortion, it will set off a domino of legal challenges that leads right to the Supreme Court’s doorstep once more. The Post-Liberal Right cares nothing for ideological consistency, only the fulfillment of their agendas; just as they have struck down Roe with claims of turning the issue back to the states, they will do so again when a second Dredd Scott is issued that severely curtails (if not utterly ends) the right to reproductive autonomy in blue states. This, assuming a national abortion ban isn’t legislated following whatever nightmarish political designs come to pass in the 2024 election. Post-Liberalism will come to all of us, whether through courts, congress, or darker means still.

Once the right to abortion is revoked, along with the rights to same-sex marriage (Obergefell v. Hodges), to contraceptives (Griswold v. Connecticut), to same-sex intimacy (Lawrence v. Texas), and countless others, it will not be coming back in our lifetimes, not in these United States. Democrat leaders implore us, the voters, to save Roe by voting for pro-choice candidates, while they themselves not only sponsor anti-choice establishment Dems over committed progressives in primary races, but also still play to the fantasy of bipartisanship. The Republican party is not interested in accepting free and fair elections, nor do they chase the delusion of compromise. The red states of this country are not true democracies but a legion of petty imperia, where “inconvenient” votes are suppressed and the opposition exists in tatters. By all means, vote down the ballot, it’s an important civic function and it should be exercised while it still matters in places where it still does. But voting alone will not save us.

There are not many roads open to maintaining the right to abortion, or indeed, any of the other rights that the political left has fought for over the past century. At least, not through legal channels. We may be entering a new and perilous era, but that does not mean we will be in a particularly new or particularly perilous position. With advances in technology, underground networks can easily be set up to provide abortion care as they were in the days of the Jane Collective or today in arch-conservative Poland (mifepristone is relatively easy to make and can be delivered via drone). Groups like Jane’s Revenge offer a chance at direct action through leaderless resistance against the infrastructure of the anti-abortion movement. Wider collectives, like the LGBTQ, Black, and Jewish communities, are all too familiar with the violence of christofascist white supremacy, but are more resilient and connected than ever.

If Post-Liberalism is to come to pass, if these truly are the twilight years of the pretense of liberty and facade of equality in these United States, then we the people will need to be ready. The death of Roe is not the finale but the opening shot of a long barrage that will roll back the rights we hold dear, and it’s anyone’s guess as to where it will end. And the post-liberals will need to be fought tooth and nail every step of the way, until the fruits of their victory turn to ashes in their mouths.

If they mean to inherit America, then give them the America they deserve.

The UO 'Demonstration Team'

Solidarity News — Sun, 01 May 2022 14:42:28 -0700

Surveillance of Students Integrated Across Dozens of Administration offices and UOPD

----Original Message----
From: Rick Haught <rickh@uoregon.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, November 9, 2021 12:22 PM
To: Tina Haynes <thaynes@uoregon.edu>
Cc: Krista Dillon <kristam@uoregon.edu>; Paul Timmins
<ptimmins@uoregon.edu>
Subject: UO Statement on Freedom of Speech

“Hi Tina, Welcome to the messy world of Freedom of Expression.”

The UO Demonstration Team is a quiet circle of administration employees and University of Oregon Police who work together to surveil social media and spy on community protests. Student organizers have known for some time that the administration was monitoring their activities, but until an email conversation disclosed through a Public Records Request mentioned the Demo Team’s existence, students weren’t aware of how they were being watched. State public records requests have revealed that the administration has been monitoring student protest and political activity through social media posts and in person surveillance since at least 2017. An official charter for the Demo Team is available which includes a laundry list of high-level administration employees and UOPD officers. A core and secondary team of UO employees are included in the charter and compose a sprawling network of informants that cover roughly every non-academic department of the university.

Official mention of the UO Demonstration Team is limited to one public posting from the University Risk Management and Insurance Association’s (URMIA) Western Regional Risk Management Event Conference, where Krista Dillon Co-Chair of the Demo Team spoke in 2019. Record requests for information on the UO Demonstration Team have revealed over 500 pages of documents concerning their activities since 2017. The team’s activities may precede 2017, but their most recent charter was updated July 1st 2021. What these documents reveal is that any publicly posted information concerning political or protest events is distributed to the widest possible network of campus authority.

The team appears to focus on distributing intelligence before demonstrations, protests, controversial events, or any suspected disturbance. Surveillance is compiled by the Demo Team and in the event of a “civil unrest incident” the team defers to what is called the Incident Management Team (IMT). The clear continuity between information gathering and evidence gathering is overtly expressed in the team’s charter and reinforced by many of the procedural documents disclosed in the recent records requests. This wide net of tattle-tales is the eyes and ears for both the previously mentioned Incident Management Team and a larger umbrella department of Safety & Risk Services. Comparing both the Demo Team charter and the IMT organizational chart reveal that the two share significant crossover. Though the IMT has a wide portfolio that includes pandemic response and various disasters, it is in close proximity to both UO’s General Counsel and UOPD. It appears that when the IMT is activated, the correspondences of the UO Demonstration Team stop being publicly accessible records and are designated as “privileged logs.” All such privileged logs listed in recent records requests include correspondences with Kevin Reed (the UO General Counsel) or UOPD staff.

Though recent public records requests about the UO Demonstration team are extensive in scope, there are conspicuous holes that appear in the records. The most glaring lapse is a void of all Demo Team activity during 2020. Even citations of “privileged logs” are absent from this period and one must remember that this was an era of almost constant demonstrations and protest in Eugene during the BLM/George Floyd uprising. Several protests took place on campus in that time frame, but any activity of the Demo Team is simply absent from the public records request. Whether this means the Demo Team was simply not functioning during this period or the Incident Management Team was in a constant state of activation is unclear. Other inconsistencies in the records requests reveal that the more successful or disruptive a demonstration might be, the more likely it will be passed along to the UO General Counsel or the UOPD. Such circumstances often put the details of the Demo Team’s surveillance activities beyond the retrieval of public records requests.

The picture that can still be painted of the UO Demonstration Team is one of an extended network of administration employees constantly raising the alarm about student political activity and protest. The Demo Team even has informants in event services, which are obliged to report suspicious or controversial events booked by student groups or community organizations. Additionally, sprawling pages of procedural documents detail pre-planned responses for a few categorized campus direct actions. Though the exact details of the procedures have been redacted behind big black boxes in the records requests, three categories listed are protests/demonstrations, marches, and tree sits.

One of the most recent demonstrations detailed in the Demo Team records was the Nov 17th 2021 protest against timber executive Tyler Freres of Freres Lumber, who gave a presentation on post fire logging at the UO Law School. In this case the Demo Team seems to have obtained information through a string of student informants that passed along a screenshot from a Discord chat. The Demo Team prepared for any disruption with a planned script but when the protest erupted over 50 demonstrators shouted down the timber executive en masse. Tyler Freres appeared to have been completely dejected by the demonstration and the event went from having a packed amphitheater to a couple of demoralized business law students lingering behind.

Demo Team chat logs reveal that the team did not feel there were grounds for code of conduct violations and Kevin Reed the UO General Counsel called the protesters “wimps” for only disrupting the presentation for five minutes. The Demo Team was more concerned about press documenting the protest and were keen to know if the media was on hand to witness the disruption. It was later noted in a chat log that Freres Lumber President Rob Freres, cousin of Tyler Freres was, “clearly still pretty annoyed/frustrated,” when he was encountered the next day at an OSU event. Freres Lumber has made a significant financial contribution to the UO Law School, most likely in the hopes of influencing one of the leading environmental law programs in the country.

None of the protest participants were cited for code of conduct violations and this is likely the reason for the transparency regarding this incident. What media did emerge about the protest, Demo Team members commented as having, “not much traction.” Event attendees were asked to sign-in before entering the amphitheater room and this list was circulated to the whole Demo Team.

On a comical note, is the Demo Team’s ongoing feud with the Cascadia Forest Defenders, a local radical environmentalist organization. It appears that the organization’s social media feeds are monitored by the Demo Team. In 2019 a campus tree-sit protesting local timber sales appears to have gone all the way up the chain to Safety & Risk Services. A formal letter was delivered to the Forest Defenders citing safety and policy violation for occupying the tree from April 15-17th 2019. The Forest Defenders were known to have taken exception to any safety concerns, and even resolved to draft a response letter countering the accusations. A heated exchange also took place with the campus arborist on this matter, but all safety inquiries were thoroughly answered by climbing experts that participated in the action. Demo Team correspondences revealed that initially the administration wanted to use city codes regulating camping on public property to justify eviction of the tree sitters. This was decided against because, “we do not want the City to regulate how we use our property for UO events.”

In 2017 Charlie Landeros was one of the most active organizers and critics of the University of Oregon while they were a UO student. Because of this, they drew the ire of multiple university administrators. Particularly, the demonstration team singled them out in their investigation of the State of the University protest. Remember: Landeros’ life was tragically cut short on January 11, 2019 when they were murdered by the Eugene Police Department as they were picking up their daughter from Cascade Middle School.

Landeros was mentioned by the Demonstration Team on October 5, 2017 due to their involvement in the State of the University disruption. UO Students interrupted the annual State of the University address, where President Schill was slated to speak on October 6. Students organized a counter-action named the State of Reality to demonstrate how the university failed to protect them from white supremacists whilst pricing out the most marginalized.

UO administrators included a screenshot of Landeros’ Facebook post, sharing the event in their action plan write up and with the UOPD. Landeros also shared an intimate personal story of being a person of color living under white supremacist institutions. They went into how President Schill hasn’t taken action against blatant fascism, causing students like them to feel unsafe at the university.

Admin felt threatened by this letter, which showed no violent intent. Then UOPD Chief Matt Carmichael admitted in response that while the post was noteworthy, it did not “suggest violence.” Messages from administrators showed that they had issues with Landeros personally and not just the letter they wrote.

”[Their] postings have become more intense and [they do] seem more fixated on Mike. Additionally, I understand [their] G.I. Bill runs out after this term,” Kris Winter, co-lead of the demonstration team said in an email.

It is unclear whether Landeros said publicly that their GI Bill was set to run out or if admin accessed that info using other means.

An overall trend in the Demo Team’s behavior is the monitoring of GTFF union events, an ongoing concern of the Demonstration Team. An issue that came up again and again was the use of amplified sound, especially from GTFF. Krista Dillon said that it is University protocol to get a photo of individuals that use amplified sound after they are asked to stop. These emails also show their interest in accessing the media to ensure they report on the administration’s view on these labor struggles.The Demo Team appears to do a check-in whenever GTFF or SEIU are entering contract negotiations, but as of now recent records requests do not reveal their reaction to strike conditions.

Dillon, in addition to surveilling protests with the Demo Team, helps lead the University’s COVID-19 response team. This puts her in a special position where she meets with unions to set COVID policy, and later surveil these unions’ protests about the administration’s inaction surrounding COVID safety protocols.

Chat logs provided in our public records show administrators providing minute by minute updates of health and safety speakouts by staff and students. Dillon sends texts saying there are 10 people here, then 20, then 50.

One text from Dillon reads, “Still going. Calls for student employees to unionize. Chanting.”

It appears that the UO Demonstration Team has largely integrated the university administration into a network of police collaboration and surveillance. This default network of informants plays a noted role in outsourcing evidence collection and preparing defense against legal liability. Most importantly the Demo Team seems to fall in line with the profile of UO’s massive public relations apparatus that Joshua Hunt chronicled in his book Nike University. Given the teams bent towards media management, this would align with repeated attempts to safeguard donor associated brand names and commercial legacies that now overwhelm UO’s campus and cultural landscape.

The point at which it became the university's job to monitor political activity on campus is unclear. With a reputation that puts billions of dollars of donor contributions on the line, it is safe to say that the agency of students to set their own agenda within the university has encountered organized resistance from administration and police.

The Insurgent and Solidarity News hope to bring more public records to light concerning university surveillance of students. Every new records request raises more questions, and we thank all those comrades who contributed financially to help pay for the exorbitant fees these public records requests incur. Moving forward we hope to challenge many of the redactions we have encountered, and we hope we can delve further into the Incident Management Team (IMT), which appears to be the main punitive apparatus of the UO Demonstration team.

This story was produced in collaboration with Solidarity News and can also be viewed at solidaritynews.org

Thank you to the Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation (GTFF), Eugene Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), Neighborhood Anarchist Collective (NAC), and South Willamette Valley Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) for donating money for public records requests. Without their donations this project would not be possible.

We Need to Think Deeper About Who Will Be Affected If Roe v Wade Is Overturned

Alexa Wright — Sun, 01 May 2022 14:42:28 -0700

The draft opinion threatening to overturn Roe vs Wade is not simply an attack on women. Before tackling this nuanced subject it is important to understand the precedent set by the 1973 decision. Norma McCorvey, known under the pseudonym Jane Roe, was five months pregnant in 1970 when she desired an abortion. Henry Wade, the Dallas County district attorney at the time, served as the defendant in this case hence the name “Roe vs Wade.” With the help of lawyers from her home county of Dallas, Texas, Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington, McCorvey secured the right to abortion for all people until the fetus could survive outside of the womb on Jan. 22 1973, with a 7-2 majority vote. On May 2nd 2022, Politico published a leaked draft opinion penned by Justice Samuel Alito displaying the court’s intention to overturn Roe and another landmark abortion decision, Planned Parenthood vs Casey. This decision is often viewed exclusively as an attack on women, however this could not be further from the truth. This decision directly targets all people who can get pregnant and zeros in on those in poverty, people of color, and potentially members of the LGBTQ+ community; It is a chilling display of the United States’ descent into theocratic fascism.

Popular neoliberal feminism often views the scope of feminism to only apply to “women’s issues”, this view of feminism is a part of the problem. It is not a feminism for all women but rather a feminism for the 1 percent, where “girlboss” women are praised as progress for “breaking the glass ceiling” while stepping on the backs of impoverished women and people of color to reach it. Cinzia Arruzza describes an alternative “Feminism for the 99 Percent” in her manifesto, claiming that feminism should represent “all who are exploited, dominated, and oppressed” (Arruzza et. al, pp. 14, 2019) by our capitalist society. Using this idea of feminism to analyze the Supreme Court’s attack on abortion rights we see that not just women are affected by this decision. Rather, this is an attack on all who can get pregnant, minorities, and the poor. Capitalism is built on the grounds of exploitation, this country’s infrastructure was built mostly by slave labor, and a drastic racial wealth gap displays that not much has changed. Two centuries of systemic racism in the form of Jim Crow Laws, voter suppression, redlining, and the over-policing of primarily black neighborhoods has led the median income of a black family to be just 10% of the median income of a white family (Urban Institute, Survey of Consumer Finances, 2016). Modern capitalism seeks to reinforce this oppression, forcing struggling BIPOC mothers to birth a child they cannot take care of and then refusing to allow them government assistance. This is not done without reason, the cycle of exploitation that facilitates capitalism requires children to be born into poverty and forced to take low paying jobs in order to keep the economy moving. With over 1 million workers lost during the pandemic, our elites need more people to exploit, and how better to find more workers than to create them via forced birth? It is not uncommon for countries in late stage capitalism to begin to swing right and restrict the rights and freedoms of the workers, we are currently living in one of these periods. The Roe v Wade decision will likely foreshadow several other freedoms being stripped as well.

It is reasonable to fear that our rights pertaining to situations other than abortion are at risk if Roe v Wade is overturned. This is because Roe is protected under the constitutional “right to privacy” which conservatives on the Supreme Court have argued since the right to privacy is not explicitly stated in the US Constitution is null. The question of if the bill of rights protects the rights that are not expressly stated in the Constitution is controversial. The Due Process clause of the 14th Amendment is most often cited in cases involving the right to privacy. The 14th Amendment states, “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” In the case of Roe v Wade, the court determined that the right to privacy is fundamental and the state may only intervene in abortions, with exceptions for the mother’s health, after the point of viability (approximately 24 weeks). The fact that Roe may be overturned on the grounds that the right to privacy does not exist in the Constitution puts many other landmark Supreme Court decisions on the chopping block. These include: Griswold v Connecticut and Eisenstadt v Baird (the right to contraception), Lawrence v Texas (the right to be in a same sex relationship, phrased as the right to perform sodomy), Loving v Virginia (The right to interracial marriage), and Obergefell v Hodges (The right to same sex marriage). These rights among others are also common points of conservative attack, with anti-CRT and LGBTQ+ book bans occurring across the nation. With these factors in account, it would be reasonable to assume that an increasingly radical right wing would overturn any of these cases following the overturning of Roe v Wade.

The Roe vs Wade decision is a mark of the United States’ descent into fascism. Historically, when fascist authoritarian regimes start to take power they begin by slowly stripping the rights of the people, weakening them so they cannot fight back. Losing our rights to bodily autonomy is a clear example of this. Fascist regimes often go after education, forcing students to learn only what the state wants them to learn. This is displayed clearly in the banning of books relating to race, gender, and sexuality across the country. Authoritarian right wing policies such as the state of Texas considering the death penalty for facilitating an abortion have already begun to rear their ugly heads. Another marker of a fascist regime, high and militant police presence and unethical policing practices have existed in the US for a very long time and state and federal governments continue to raise funding for police departments, while their constituents are left starving and without healthcare or shelter. The US police force would be the third largest military in the world behind the US and China respectively if we compare it to modern militaries. We are not on the brink of a descent into fascism, it has already begun.

There is no true equality and justice under capitalism. The system was developed by those with ideas of white supremacy in mind, and facilitated on the backs of enslaved people. These sentiments are deeply rooted into the capitalist economic system and everyone except the wealthiest elites are suffering to keep it running. This is especially true for BIPOC, women, the LGBTQ+ community, and those in poverty. Neoliberalism will not save us, voting will not save us, revolution will save us. Many liberals would argue that it is paramount that we keep abortion legal, but this is not enough. Cinzia Arruzza describes this well in saying, “By itself, legal abortion does little for poor and working-class women who have neither the means to pay for it nor access to clinics that provide it. Rather, reproductive justice requires free, universal, not-for-profit health care, as well as the end of racist, eugenicist practices in the medical profession.” (Arruzza et. al, pp. 14, 2019) There is no reforming an exploitative, racist, and oppressive system; this system must be revolutionarily dismantled by the people so that a new anti-capitalist, anti-racist, anti-fascist, and just system may be formed and governed by the 99 percent, not the 1 percent of elites who currently run our governmental system.

April 2022: Letter From the Editor

J. Ellis — Fri, 01 Apr 2022 14:42:28 -0700

Last issue, I let our readers and our contributors down. The events that followed brought insight and inspired realizations about the Insurgent’s inadequacies that would not have happened organically within our organization, for reasons I attempt to identify in writing this letter. Following President Schill’s email, the question we received most was how could this even happen? The question looming over our heads was where do we go from here, if anywhere? For a while, I didn’t have a precise answer; I was asking myself the same thing. I do not claim to know the entire answer now. But in the weeks since, I have been putting my thoughts to paper in an attempt to seek out the answers to these questions. This letter discusses the harm our February 2022 issue inflicted, how that act of ignorance is part of a larger problem, and what needs to change for something like this never to happen again. As Editor in Chief I carried most of the responsibility in choosing to publish the sketch of Kevin Marbury and Isaiah Boyd. Therefore, before I say anything further I would like to use this space to personally, formally apologize to Dr. Kevin Marbury and President Isaiah Boyd for our inexcusable portrayal of their character, on behalf of the whole of the Insurgent. The decision I made was misguided and I accept and bear the blame for the reception of that image. Here I reckon with the position I was in, still am in, as editor -from my perspective as editor- and the institutional problems in The Student Insurgent that this position perpetuates.

When I first saw the sketch to accompany the ASUO article, a feeling of doubt struck me. I chose to ignore this hesitation because I trusted the artistic judgment of my comrade who drew it. I’d take back that choice if I could, but no amount of remorse can undo what we did or change the past. However, we can learn from it. Despite the grief incurred by the publication of that image, I am grateful for what resulted in the aftermath. The cartoon’s consequences catalyzed long-overdue changes in our organization. The way I see it—and I say this with all due respect to my fellow collaborators—the Insurgent as I found it in Fall of 2019 was in a state of dysfunction. I seldom experienced the collectivism that was advertised and promised by my comrades, not until enough time passed that veteran members started imparting more responsibility on me. As a writer, I couldn’t help but notice that I was often one of, if not the only, women in the room at this time. It was predominantly white, too. Communication consisted of crossed wires. In hindsight, it’s no stunner that white and male supremacy had taken hold in our space, since other backgrounds and perspectives were such a minority and we lacked a cohesive, collective vision.

Through the years I have grown increasingly disturbed and disenfranchised by the complete and utter lack of diversity (both in identity and ideology) within our own newsroom and indeed in Eugene’s entire “radical” scene. It mystifies me how comrades that champion anti-racism, anti-homophobia, anti-transphobia, anti-patriarchy, anti-capitalism, anti-imperialism —you name it— and stand on progressive platforms fail to meaningfully recognize and contend with how these systems are embedded in their very being. This scene is so shrouded in theory and plagued by posturing that it has lost touch with reality. We are so preoccupied with criticizing institutions that we don’t pause and introspect long enough to apply this same critical lens to ourselves.

I say this with love: the Insurgent was, and really still is, riding on a radical legacy shadowed by unaddressed systemic problems that have disempowered its impact and destabilized its function for the past several years. It’s true that running an activist newsletter is no easy task, let alone navigating the interpersonal and intersectional politics that come with the territory. So, not long after becoming editor, I realized the Insurgent could only hope of functioning more effectively if we dismantled its most inefficient and self-destructive qualities, starting by communalizing responsibility. I aspired for an Insurgent that reflexively embraces a diversity of perspectives— not the myopic echo chamber that festered for the first years of my involvement. I wanted it to be a platform for personal empowerment and critical reflection and expression. I wanted our ideologies and our praxis to grow with, adapt to, and reflect the increasing diversity of voices I began to see in the ROAR center. I had foolishly hoped that a new editor could simply alleviate our old problems within the structure of our organization. Obviously, this is not the case. It’s not as simple as a fresh start. Hierarchies are an inevitable part of all social organizations, even ones with expressly anti-hierarchical values or missions. Groups must have systems in place that help prevent this from happening. Failing this, the Insurgent and other groups I’ve been in lack the tools needed to uproot the weeds of power structures. Hierarchy creeps up; it is alluring, with promises of power and social capital, and it takes conscientious effort for organizers not to fold to temptation.

A bulk, but not all, of our fundamental problems can be traced to these power differentials. I have seen hierarchy at work my entire time with the Insurgent, the norm being that the editor bears responsibility for the bulk of the duties and therefore makes most of the decisions. In absence of delegation, the editor obtains a lot of institutional knowledge, and if not communalized these skills can be inadvertently gatekept, forming a rift between editor and collective. When I was nominated for Editor in Chief, I was truly aghast by how much work and responsibility falls to this role. The model is entirely untenable; the responsibility snowballs fast— after a few issues of me juggling all the paper’s moving parts I realized how unsustainable this model is on multiple fronts.

Under this leadership structure so much of each new issue depends on the editor’s organizational ability. This was fine when there were six of us, but this system imploded as our numbers grew. Until now, there weren’t really any formal leadership roles outside of editor in chief and the prison project liaison (and an art director of sorts, sometimes), and before I became editor and our group grew, I hadn’t questioned this. Why assign designated art editors, web editors, formatting editors, copy editors, etc.? We’d always simply taken help as it came and gotten by. Perhaps I didn’t question it because this informality on the surface appears to be in line with stereotypical anarchist organizing, lacking designated roles typically associated with institutional structures. But in actuality, this undermines anarchism’s central aim towards collectivism and autonomy by defaulting so much power and responsibility on the few explicit roles. Under this model, burnout is inevitable, and the structure and cohesion of the collective crumbles as the editor folds under the weight of the work. No one can contribute their best in this dynamic.

Fundamentally, this is an issue of delegation. I’ve never known an Insurgent where all the major decisions about its operations aren’t ultimately funneled to the editor in chief. It goes without saying how problematic this leadership model is. This must be picked apart and critically evaluated. It is hypocritical to make a claim to radicalism when our group cannot even identify and confront power imbalances within its own member make-up. Because responsibility and trust are so centralized, we’ve ended up alienating ourselves from our own contributors and community. Therefore, oftentimes the work we produce says more about the [lack of] efficacy of our leadership and our organization’s operations than it does about the talent and ideas of our contributors. All the other amazing work featured in the February issue was undermined by the recklessness of a few individuals with the most decision-making power. This autocratic production process fails to adequately represent and celebrate the work and heart that our collective pours into every issue.

Beyond the structural inadequacies of the Insurgent we must also address a critical theoretical and practical concern in modern social movements. We must realize that as privileged members of the university institution, we are not solely here to learn. We must also unlearn. Unlearning is a process that requires grace, humility, and honesty. We cannot posture behind our causes and pretend we can do no wrong. As activists it is important to be able to swallow your pride and not hide behind your politics. This is central to a larger conversation about accountability in activist spaces. Perhaps the most important part of actualizing justice is practicing radical accountability within your own community, accountability towards communities you aim to defend, and towards those you may at times be ideologically opposed to.

Accountability looks like facing your fuck-ups and shortcomings to actively correct yourself and prevent future harm by unlearning problematic patterns. Recent events forced me to contend with my own culpability and complicity within the dynamics of the group that made it possible for something like this to happen. This is where the matter of intent complicates the harm caused by a person or group’s actions. Too often I have forgiven acts of harm on the grounds that the person responsible didn’t intend for their actions to have harmful impacts. Because of this, I have excused sexism against myself, transphobic microaggressions against my comrades, or, in this instance, anti-Blackness against Isaiah Boyd with little to no consequence. I excused this because I believed intentions were pure. “But they didn’t mean it that way…” That does not matter. What must take precedence is demanding responsibility for an action’s impacts, regardless of intent. This requires having the bravery to call out problematic behaviors when they happen, a courage I have regrettably lacked. I, and my peers, can do better. The uncomfortable truth is that someone can have the most virtuous of politics, of values, of intentions and motivations and still exhibit behavior that works to uphold structures of oppression and undermine the efficacy of others. Accountability for us, then, looks like taking ownership for the problems we have both individually and collectively contributed to and then working with the community to develop a new model that adequately, actually prevents hierarchy from manifesting in the Insurgent.

This summary of my observations points to, I think, a straightforward conclusion. The image should have never been published. But it was. As sorry as we are, apologies are pointless if not followed by radical change. The Insurgent must decentralize power if it wants a future as a publication. For too long, experience has been leveraged by individuals to maintain leadership positions and authority over the collective’s operations. Eradicating this structure requires that we dedicate more formal leadership positions, positions that help facilitate the consensus of the whole group to ensure all perspectives are represented in decision-making. Like the larger Movement we all participate in, the Insurgent must be multi-faceted, dynamic, and reflective of every individual constituting the collective in order to form a united front. Therefore, as of April 2022, I’d like to officially dissolve the title and distribute the responsibilities of Editor in Chief. Leadership should never fall on the shoulders of one person. Not only is it unsustainable, but misrepresentative to have only one figurehead for an organization with over thirty active members. Over the last few months, we have been developing new roles, policies, and procedures that would formalize participation and delegation of responsibility across all facets of the newspaper, throughout the entirety of the publication process. This process has demanded a lot of vulnerability and long overdue confrontation, but through it all I have seen a spirit of solidarity persist in this time of change. Our organization’s existence is indebted to the contributors and readers that invest faith in its potential despite all its flaws. It owes its platform today to the people that participate in it and continue to do so, to those who did and walked away, to those that loathe it and those who love it— the Insurgent will continue to exist for as long as people are willing to engage with it.

After February, I’ve wrestled heavily with whether we have the right or the platform to continue publishing at all. My own conclusion is that if we didn’t publish it would mean that we succumbed to our flaws instead of learning from and overcoming them. The group consensus is to continue publishing work that accurately reflects our values and our mission, achievable through redistributing responsibility to ensure more checks and balances and engender an atmosphere of collaboration unprecedented in the recent history of our publication. We are in a defining moment for our organization where we must reckon with our past to shape our future. Our mistake is an opportunity to finally address systemic problems in the Insurgent, a chance for us to grow and change before we obsolesce like so many movements that have succumbed to similar failings. Moving forward, we are redefining what responsibility looks like in our group: creating new roles and delegating duties, implementing structures that enforce and uphold the collective’s values, and building trust and solidarity within our group and the Eugene community by having the bravery to be vulnerable and confront bigotry within our ranks. So, reader, thank you for reading this far. And in the spirit of accountability, thank you for expecting better from us— we must and we will use this moment to do just that.

Ballmer Blitz

Dorian Blue — Fri, 01 Apr 2022 14:42:28 -0700

Make sure to check out our Rogues Gallery!

On February 28th, President Schill sent a campus-wide email, sharing that he had “exciting news to share about the future of the University of Oregon.” Many speculated what it could be about, though most rightly assumed it was hinting at a large donation. The next day, as promised, it was revealed that Steve and Connie Ballmer, former CEO of Microsoft and UO trustee respectively, gave around half a billion dollars to start the Ballmer Institute. The Institute will be located on the campus of former Concordia University, outside of Portland. It will be focused on child behavioral science, with the goal to provide new behavioral and mental health care for children in the state of Oregon through its research. While this project has been lauded as an amazing development, it’s important to consider the history of the Ballmers’ donations and interests, along with the dubious nature of such philanthropic efforts overall. The Oregon public school system has some of the lowest per-student spending and teacher wages in the entire country, but instead of enacting meaningful change to make the overall system better, the Institute will serve as a reminder of half-measures and performative actions that don’t enact any meaningful change. A society marred by wealth inequality will not be remedied by the rich deciding to dole out portions of their money, no matter how large or “significant” the gifts may seem.

One place where the Ballmers have continuously funneled their money is the organization Stand For Children (STF). While on the outside it appears to advocate for diversity and equity in public education, it is merely a vehicle to support increasing the power of charter schools and to undermine teacher unions. A former parent volunteer, writing for the Washington Post, explained how she witnessed the organization operating in a top-down manner, with volunteers expected to parrot questionable talking points to parents and teachers, while leadership worked to support and fund legislation that “…tied the release of much-needed school funding to the expansion of private schools, online learning, and other so-called ‘reforms’.”¹ STF has also supported political campaigns, such as a 2016 Washington state election for Supreme Court Justice, where they spent $116,000 on Greg Zempel, running against Justice Barbara Madsen, who authored a decision that ruled charter schools unconstitutional.²

With this background in mind, it’s hard not to see what ulterior motives are present in the formation of the Institute, far beyond the mission of simply helping children and furthering research. The University of Oregon itself, though a public institution, has also been under a process of privatization over the last decade. A clear agenda then shapes itself: the mixing of private money and public resources to create a Frankenstein monster of billionaire ideals forced upon a populace who have little power and resources to fight for a system that will actually support the children of Oregon.

Notes

Strauss, Valerie. “Volunteer: Why I Stopped Helping Stand for Children (Update).” The Washington Post, WP Company, 14 July 2011. ↩︎
Santos, Melissa. “Charter-School Backers Spending Big to Try to Unseat State Supreme Court Justice.” The Seattle Times, The Seattle Times Company, 28 July 2016, https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/charter-school-pac-funds-opponent-of-justice-who-declared-schools-unscontitutional/. ↩︎

CAHOOTS joins the National Alternative Mobile Services Association

Hana Francis — Fri, 01 Apr 2022 14:42:28 -0700

The Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets program, also known as CAHOOTS, has been running for over thirty years. In the late 1980s, staff and volunteers from White Bird Clinic, CAHOOTS’ parent organization, came together to form the CAHOOTS model. This was one of the first programs of its kind, but recently similar models have taken up in other cities as people across the country recognize the urgent need for trauma-informed mental health emergency response.

In February of 2022, the Alternative Mobile Services Association was launched in a collaboration between grassroots nonprofits, agencies and government organizations from across the nation who want to nurture emergency response services oriented to mental health in the United States. The goal is to have an ongoing platform so that people can better utilize and share this practice-based evidence; what people have been doing so far, and how has that been working.

The CAHOOTS model consists of a two-person team, a crisis counselor and a medic, that respond to crisis calls through the Eugene ambulatory-fire-police dispatch line. In Springfield, they are dispatched from the non-emergency line. The CAHOOTS vans run 24/7 in Eugene and Springfield, Oregon. At any given time there are never more than two active vans in Eugene. In Springfield there is only one van constantly on shift. Due to the high demand and limited capacity, wait times can be hours-long.

At CAHOOTS, Laurel Lisovskis fills two essential roles. She is a crisis worker and the clinical supervisor coordinator. This means that she holds shifts on the CAHOOTS vans and organizes mental wellness support for her peers. She also spoke at the recent Law and Mental Health Conference on behalf of CAHOOTS.

“Mobile crisis is weird because everyone isn’t hanging out in an office together,” Lisovskis said in an interview. “It can be kind-of a lonely job where you are in a vacuum of a van for 12 hours with your shift partner, and if you don’t create intentional spaces to be in community with one another, I think that can be kind of dangerous.”

Lisovskis said this work has historically been lonely not only because of the physical isolation but also because of the unique and emotionally intensive work that seemingly few people in our society are willing to commit to. Perhaps this won’t be the case anymore.

The initiative meeting of agencies within the Alternative Mobile Services Association was held at the beginning of February, at the 2022 Law and Mental Health Conference, “On Alternatives to the Police.” The event was coordinated by Jason Renaud, a well-known nonprofit consultant with over 35 years of open recovery from alcoholism.

“There is a national effort going on in dozens of different cities and counties across the country to develop a model of mobile outreach for people who are in some kind of crisis, we often call this a mental health crisis,” said Jason Renaud, who brought this association together. “They are all trying to solve the same problem, but they are all working alone. So, the idea is that through mutual support of these teams across the country we can learn more, faster, and get to that person on the street who is in crisis more effectively.”

For the first time there is a national link between these mobile crisis intervention programs. They can now share the experiences of trial and error, get more quantifiable data to show the success of their programs, contrast the variations on models and develop their services together.

One of the topics of debate among the organizations is the qualifications for being a crisis worker. Some models are opting for exclusively licensed mental health practitioners, but Chelsea Swift of CAHOOTS explains that this is a power dynamic which she actively tries to avoid. Licensed practitioners have the ability to diagnose and place a hold on someone which could mean forcing someone to engage in care against their will. The work that CAHOOTS does makes sure that every service they offer is voluntary.

“If people think, ‘at any given point this person can throw me in the back of a van and put me in a room with four white walls and a padded bench,’” said Swift, “they are not going to engage with you on the human level that we get to engage at CAHOOTS. And I think that keeps us safe too.”

Organizations like the Denver STAR program, Atlanta’s PAD program, and Oakland’s MACRO are among the 27 cities and agencies that have joined so far.

The main goal of the Alternative Mobile Services Association is to connect organizations that are practicing alternatives, but it also offers individual memberships to anyone who is interested in learning more about these alternatives.

The membership system is designed to be more accessible to people who may be more likely to be impacted by the increased availability of these crisis alternatives. Discounted prices are available for “peers" or students, this means anyone who has lived experience of mental illness, addiction, or alcoholism and/or is a full or part-time student.

Come for the Boobs, Stay for the Conversation

Paige Hale — Fri, 01 Apr 2022 14:42:28 -0700

Art by Sim

Four years ago, I worked briefly as a camgirl on a porn site, and this experience gave me a new perspective on the idea of intimacy. A camgirl, for those who don’t know, is someone who livestreams themselves for the purpose of sexual entertainment. These shows span a range of nudity, content, and interactivity, with many—including mine—containing full nudity, solo sex acts, and text chat with viewers.

After that description, I’m sure you are thinking that this article is going to be about the vulnerability and intimacy inherent in being naked on camera in front of a group of people. While that is something I’d like to explore in detail, this is not that article. Instead, I want to focus on the non-sexual conversations I had with people while on camera.

My general routine for a standard one-hour show was to spend roughly 15 minutes getting undressed, allowing people in the chat to tell me which articles of clothing to take off, teasing them, showing myself off. Once I was naked, I would sit down and chat with them, answer questions, and perform requests. People brought a lot of different energies to the chat. There were the people who just wanted to virtually catcall me in the chat, which was fine by me. That’s what I was there for, and what I expected. But in addition to that, there were people who wanted something a little deeper than just a pretty, naked trans girl on their screen. They wanted a connection to me, and so they would ask how my day was going with genuine curiosity. And yes, some of the attention they were devoting to me was most likely because of the nudity, but I could tell by their questions that they also had actual interest. Nobody asks about the topic of a research paper if they’re only thinking about boobs.

In addition, when I asked my viewers how they were doing, I would receive real answers—they had just come home from work; they were about to go watch Star Trek with their husband; they had a hard day at their job, but now their day was looking up. People seemed to really want to share what was happening in their lives.

One time, an electrician told me about his daily routine, the licensure to become a certified handyman, and the finer aspects of wiring a house. In fact, we talked so much about electronics that I had to start a private chat with him because I was clogging up the general chat with questions about standard residential voltage levels.

Another time, I did a private show for someone who turned out to be a professor from the UK who taught the history of socialism. We talked about political theory for a bit and exchanged book recommendations. He was particularly interested in the class I was taking on the history of American radicalism, and the primary texts that I was reading for it.

One of the more surprising conversations I had was when a person requested a private show and told me that they were around 60 and had just realized that they might be a trans woman. We chatted for twenty minutes about what it’s like to be trans, some resources they could use if they wanted to further explore their identity, and my personal transition process. At the time I had only recently started my medical transition—if I remember correctly, I was only about 3 months on estrogen at that point—but even still, I had a good few years of experience being out, and even more years of experience being closeted. They asked about how I knew I was trans (which is a topic far too long to include in this article), my coming-out process, and how I felt about my body. Usually, it’s quite uncomfortable when someone questions you about your body, especially as a trans person. But I didn’t feel uncomfortable at all. This online space we were in was built solely for sexual voyeurism. In this context, a question about my trans body was completely appropriate, even innocuous. I’ve encountered a few other contexts that have allowed people to feel open and comfortable enough to have a conversation like the one this person and I had.

I think that the inherent intimacy of watching live porn opened an avenue for these people to talk about themselves. Here I was, naked, open, and chatty, and I think that it let them open themselves up too. They didn’t know me in real life, and we’d never meet in the future, but for an hour or so, we could be closer than friends. In sexual spaces online I find that this can be a common theme. It may be weird to say, but I find that quite lovely.

Fossil Free Futures Now

Solidarity News — Fri, 01 Apr 2022 14:42:28 -0700

Wednesday afternoon April 6th students and community members rallied in front of the EMU to demand the University of Oregon move off fracked gas and electrify its infrastructure. They also continued to call on the City of Eugene to ban the use of so-called “natural gas” in newly constructed buildings, and transition to the use of electricity for all buildings.

The event was organized by UO Climate Justice League’s Fossil Free UO campaign. Fossil Free UO was started at the end of last school year coming out of Divest UO, which put pressure on the UO Foundation to divest from fossil fuels. After UO foundation leaders said its fossil fuel investments will be expiring soon and will continue to be divested according to their Environmental, Social, & Governance investment policy, Climate Justice League began Fossil Free UO to have the University move its infrastructure entirely off of fossil fuel sources. Currently they are focusing on switching the so-called “natural gas” boilers to electric boilers, which make up about 91% of the campus’s heating. In total, natural gas equipment accounts for 79% of the UO’s emissions.

The crowd held up signs painted by students in Climate Justice League, with messages like “Invest in our Future”, “Just Transition NOW”, “Fossil Fuels Kill”, and “Students for a Fossil Free UO” while speakers took to the mic. In addition to Climate Justice League, the rally featured speakers representing Sunrise Eugene, 350 Eugene, Fossil Free Eugene Coalition, OSPIRG , Save the Urban Farm, and the Progress UO ASUO campaign.

Climate Justice League members asked, “Why is a fossil free campus important to you?” and read student, alumni, and community testimonials. Bryn Callie read one alumni’s response to the question, “For the obvious reasons– we live in 2022.” “Is this affordable? Is this feasible? And obviously, yes, but I think it’s time for us to flip the question. Is it affordable to not transition? Is it feasible to live in an [uninhabitable] environment because of our climate crisis? No.” David Lefevre of Fossil Free UO said Wednesday.

Fossil Free UO stands in partnership with Fossil Free Eugene, which was started in 2020 to bring together activist efforts to make sure the city fulfills its stated climate efforts. Fossil Free Eugene scored a win last November when Eugene City Council voted to hold work sessions on electrifying the city. Their demands are: To ban the construction of all new fossil fuel infrastructure in the city; to levy a fee on NW Natural and other polluting corporations to create a fund to transition low income and historically marginalized communities from fracked gas to electric appliances, and to retrofit homes to increase efficiency;nd to transition all utilities in the City to 100% renewable energy by 2030.

Climate Justice League meets on Tuesdays at 6pm in the EMU Diamond Lake room. Besides the Fossil Free UO campaign, the group also runs a forest defense campaign and produces the podcast called “Climate Justice Network".

Learn more about Fossil Free Eugene at their website: fossilfreeeugene.org

RedDress, Poetry, and the Fight Against Settler-Colonialism’s Dystopia

Jayde — Fri, 01 Apr 2022 14:42:28 -0700

Marta Lu Clifford is an enrolled member and tribal elder of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde. In addition, Clifford is a highly respected tribal elder within the Kalapuya and UO Indigenous communities. Over the past couple of years, Marta has joined together with Lane Community College Longhouse Director Lori Tapenhanso of Navajo Nation and UO Department of Theatre Arts Professor Theresa May to establish the Illioo Native theater group. The Illioo Native theater group tells traditional Indigenous stories through the art of theater. The group,with help from the NAIS ARC and other community folks, is hosting the upcoming MMIWG2S event on May 4.

I was able to sit down with Clifford and Dr. May to ask about the upcoming Missing and murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit People) (MMIWG2S) RedDress Poetry in the Park event that the Illioo theater group is hosting on May 4th, and what they have seen over the years done in the community in regards to MMIWG2S.

The inspiration for the event struck Clifford in an afternoon walk with Dr. May in Alton Baker Park. As she walked, she envisioned red dresses hanging from the trees, a vision that spoke to the many Indigenous souls lost to kidnapping and violence, and as a form of connection to those souls. She also wanted to start it to create a community voice to advocate for MMIWG2S, “The inspiration for the RedDress Poetry in the Parkis just wanting to give a voice and a presence to the missing and murdered Indigenous women in Lane County because there has been nothing done here, and I just felt like we need to be more vocal, and visible in Lane County with MMIWG2S.”

Dr. May agreed with that point“As a non-native person I think it’s super important for non-native people to be aware of the epidemic of violence against indigenous people—it’s an epidemic that is rooted in the ongoing genocide of settler colonialism, but it is one that is particular to the lived experience of Indigenous women.”

This epidemic has been born from a legacy of colonial violence and theft. Within the core of the settler-colonial empire that we live in, Indigenous people in the settler imagination are seen as a hindrance in the way of the settler-colonial project. European colonizers have always seen a need for exploitation and commodification of the land, and settler-colonialism is the ultimate manifestation of euro-colonization, the creation of a nation-state with the purpose of commodifying and extracting resources from the land. This ideology conflicts with Indigenous peoples who have lived on the land for millennia. In turn, this leads to the imaginary logic of the settlers that Indigenous populations need to be eliminated and replaced by white settlers. The settler-state aims to accomplish this by any means necessary, whether it be mass killings, bio-cultural assimilation, and or forced removal–all of which have historical precedents.

Particularly, Indigenous women within the settler-state have suffered at the hands of settler mobs and chauvinists ever since the invasion began. This invasion has not just been stealing Indigenous land but invading Indigenous lives and souls as well–stealing generations of life. MMIWG2S has been a pervasive issue ever since the invasion’s earliest days, with the tragedy of Matoaka’s kidnapping by Samuel Argall being one of the first recorded incidents in 1613. This issue has long persisted within the settler-colonial state and today is an issue that contemporary media tends to conveniently ignore. Even so, it is one of the most pressing and alarming issues facing Indigenous women and communities all across Turtle Island today.

What can be done by the UO and the greater Lane community? Dr. May shared a way that the Illioo theater groups pays homage and how others could follow, “I’d personally like to see a public installation at the park or at least here on campus that is a permanent commemoration, permanently calling attention to [MMIWG2S] , and then once a year gets celebrated on MMIWG2S day (May 5th). When we perform with our theater company we always have a chair that is draped in red cloth or garment, and that is also something that all theater groups could do. It could be done when President Schill is giving a speech, there could be a chair with a red cloth or garment.”

The ignorance of the university towards Indigenous issues follows a pervasive trend. For example, Schill was incredibly reluctant to rename University Hall ,previously named Deady Hall, despite the previous name coming from a racist chauvinist and in spite of student protests. Additionally, when a faculty member at the university dressed in blackface, Schill was remarkably slow to respond until nation-wide and student protests finally forced a response.

Settler-colonialism has such pervasive effects, and as Dr. May brilliantly put it in regards to MMIWG2S, “it’s so linked to the violence of settler colonialism which is the ground that this nation-state stands on. It is a type of insidious violence and it does violence to us all, native and non-native alike.” She also turned attention to the fact that Lane County is now recognized by the CDC as a suicide cluster. The CDC defines a suicide cluster as “ a group of suicides or suicide attempts, or both, that occur closer together in time and space than would normally be expected in a given community”(CDC). The county has seen rates of suicide doubling over the past 5 months, with many under 24 (KVAL). This epidemic of suicide has led the CDC to give the univeristy and the county more federal money. However as Dr. May says “It’s fascinating to me, because if that’s a thing, if there’s federal money and the CDC calling the school district because so many students and kids are taking their own life–which is tragic–then the epidemic against native women should be addressed in that way, as they are absolutely interconnected.”

A notable element of this event will be the plentiful red dresses and clothing hanging from trees–the vision Marta had. Tobacco wrapped in red cloth and red ribbons will likely be given to all in attendance. The color red is, as Marta put it “the color that the spirits can see from the other side, so in that way, this is not an event we do for the living, it is an event that is meant to speak across the seeable world into the unseeable world–to cross over”. The motif of red is continued in tobacco wrapped in red cloth, and key-chains created by various folks from the Many Nations Longhouse community. The event will have an opening prayer, drumming and singing. Then poetry will be read around the circle of trees in the center of the park on two separate occasions, and anybody is welcome to share a poem or song. RedDress concludes with a moment for attendees, if they wish, to share the names of the missing and murdered people in their lives, Indigenous and non-Indigenous alike. This includes people who might be living but mentally lost, such as those fighting the pithole of addiction. The event will end with a healing prayer, because as Marta said “when you say someone’s name you’re putting it out to the universe so that everyone can hold onto it, and maybe give them a prayer for it.”

Anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, and anti-fascist mindsets require hope and revolutionary optimism in order to envision a better future, while always acknowledging the material conditions around us that form the settler-state, especially on top of the Kalapuya land in Eugene which we live and breathe on. RedDress is a moment to recognize all the people that settler-colonialism violence has taken from the community, and to connect those lives from the visible world to the non-visible world, as well as to envision a future together free of this epidemic of MMIWG2S and settler-colonial violence. This event will take place on May 4th at Heron Playground in Springfield at 5:00. Everyone, native and non-native alike, is invited and welcomed to this event. So, Come out and get there before 5 to show some solidarity with the Indigenous community of UO/Lane County! Stand together and pay homage to those who we have lost to the parasite of settler-colonialism; and to give acknowledgment to the insidious violence committed against Indigenous women along with the ever-constant assault on Indigenous bodies, minds, and souls by the dystopia of settler-colonialism.

Solidarity with Save the Urban Farm!

Nicholas — Fri, 01 Apr 2022 14:42:28 -0700

The Urban Farm has been a center for community and ecological knowledge sharing at the University of Oregon for decades. Now, in the wake of a second 500 million dollar donation by Phil and Penny Knight, construction for phase 2 of the Knight Campus has brought the farm under the chopping block.

The student-led organization Save the Urban Farm has been leading opposition to the project. Their main concerns lie in the use of the space known as the back 40 as a staging area during construction, and in impact on the eastern border.

The construction, planned to begin January of 2023, also will have the consequences of blocking morning sun from reaching parts of the farm, the use of the area between the woodshop and the fine arts studio as a utility tunnel, as well as further construction related disturbance (dust, noise, stress/damage to plants and native species who live on the farm).

This is not the first time the farm has come under threat. In 1986, the University hoped to develop similar large research buildings in the North Campus space, but facing resistance from members of the architecture department coupled with pushback from students, the University redirected development elsewhere.¹

In the time since ‘86, the program has grown immensely. It sees over 300 students throughout a typical school year, with classes tending to fill up within hours of open registration. It has acted as a model for urban farm programs at universities across the country. The ‘20 and ‘21 harvests yielded hundreds of pounds of fresh produce for donation to students and community members. The farm is known for working closely with local organizations such as the Willamette Farm and Food Coalition, FOOD for Lane County, Huerto de la Familia, and The School Garden Project of Lane County.

It is a program that uses every foot of the space they have available to them; any reduction would come as a major setback.

As the plans are drawn, a large strip of the eastern border (home to garden beds, bee hives, a mushroom area, and cedar, english walnut, persimmon, and apple trees) is to be absorbed by the development. While protecting this space would consist of convincing the University to redraw the footprint of a half billion dollar project, preventing the temporary use of the back 40 as a staging area would mean only selecting another nearby space.

The back 40 holds almost half of the farm’s usable garden space, including over 30 producing orchard trees, over a dozen Port Orford Cedars, and garden beds used to grow vegetables and perennials. The space has been built up and cultivated by the farm over the past 30 years.

Mitigating measures suggested by the University offer for the trees in the back 40 to be uprooted and temporarily relocated (for those whose size allow). This would result in great stress to the trees, from which they could take years to recover. With alternative options for a staging area nearby, the prioritization of slightly increased ease of access during construction over the health of the farm is a key point of concern among community members.

At a town hall held the last Wednesday of March concerning the future of the Urban Farm, the Dean of the College of Design, Adrian Parr, suggested relocating the Urban Farm entirely. Audience members responded with discomfort to such a compromise, emphasizing the work that took place over decades to build the healthy, enriched soil that is the basis for life on the farm.

As one attendee noted, the University’s ‘incorporation’ of student feedback at the back end of the decision feels disingenuous. The impacts on the Urban Farm were known from the beginning of the planning process, as well as the significance of the Urban Farm to the community. Only now, post-decision, are students given space to voice their concerns.

On April 6th the ASUO (Associated Students of the University of Oregon) held a meeting that included the unanimous passing of a resolution stating the body’s “opposition to any future development of the Knight Campus that jeopardizes the Urban Farm’s ability to continue its current operations as usual, in its current location”, as well as demanding transparency and the inclusion of students and relevant faculty in conversations concerning the future of the farm. The body pointed out that student turnout for the meeting was the largest they’ve seen for an ASUO senate hearing.

Decisions around the specific impacts on the farm are still developing, with the Landscape Architecture department and the Campus Planning Committee in talks to figure out the degree to which mitigating measures will be taken.

Community pressure will be the most important factor in determining the future of the farm. To find information on how you can get involved with Save the Urban Farm, they can be found on Instagram @savetheurbanfarm or at their website www.savetheurbanfarm.com.

Notes

Harper Keeler, _Considering the Urban Farm Program and the Role of Place-Based Experiential Education in the Pedagogy of Landscape Architecture _(2011) ↩︎

The Revolution Will Be Caffeinated!

Solidarity News — Fri, 01 Apr 2022 14:42:28 -0700

In a unanimous vote, workers at the 29th & Willamette Starbucks store officially won a union Wednesday afternoon. There were 17 yes votes, zero no votes, and no contested ballots. The bargaining unit contains 28 people in total for the new union.

Workers and supporters gathered at the GTFF office to watch the ballot count over Zoom. The process was very deliberate, with a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) employee opening the return envelope. Next they presented the secrecy envelope, then they verified the ballots all the while methodically showing the observing parties each step. Finally when the workers realized they had a majority of votes they were overjoyed and embraced in a group hug.

“It’s really just the sense of relief. [We] don’t have to stress about the vote anymore. Now getting ready for bargaining,” said Jake LaMourie, a worker at the 29th & Willamette Starbucks.

29th & Willamette became the first Starbucks store in Oregon to file for a union on January 7. Since then every other Starbucks store in Eugene has filed for a union election. The workers joined 19 other shops across the country that formed a union with Workers United, an affiliate of SEIU.

If the other Eugene stores vote in favor of a union, the 29th & Willamette workers say they plan on bargaining together with those stores, while still each having separate contracts.

The NLRB has sent out ballots to workers at all seven other Eugene Starbucks stores and the board will count the votes over the coming weeks. Ballots for the workers at the 7th & Washington, Delta & Green Acres, EMU, Franklin & Villard, and Oakway Mall Starbucks will be counted by the agency on April 28. Workers at Valley River Drive and W. 11th & Acorn Park Starbucks will have their ballots counted by the NLRB on May 5.

Ukraine: Atrocities, (Mis)information, and Cold War 2.0

Red Harris — Fri, 01 Apr 2022 14:42:28 -0700

For most people not plugged into geopolitical affairs, the news about the Russo-Ukrainian War may have slowed down on the timeline. With an initial blitz running headfirst into a brick wall of resistance and operational failure, the fronts have stagnated into a grinding slog, as Russia’s military looks to lick its wounds and consolidate hold over the territory it now occupies. Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has become a media darling and a living symbol of liberal democracy to millions of people. Multiple other nations now stand poised to join NATO. Russia has been hit with devastatingly punitive sanctions that have shunted them out of the most lucrative markets, and travel between Russia and the western world has been all but suspended. It is clear that a new global paradigm is manifesting before our eyes, though arguably it could be said that this is merely the geopolitical gloves coming off, and a formalization of what was previously an implicit state of affairs.

Accusations of genocide ring out on both sides, as Russia doubles down on its message of “denazifying” Ukraine, and Ukraine fires back with reports of war crimes in Russian-occupied territories. Russian anti-war dissidents and independent media outlets have been silenced, and Ukraine has outlawed pro-Russian opposition parties. In a confusing time, conflicting narratives have emerged. Is this a necessary war to prevent NATO expansion? Or is it a nakedly unprovoked imperialist invasion?

Under scrutiny, it becomes clear that whatever claims the Kremlin and its media fronts make, this war and its consequences are Russia’s cross to bear. War is the absolute evil of human life, make no mistake, and Russian forces have transparently targeted civilians. This is not just pointed out by state or corporate press, but verified by open source intelligence, or OSINT, a decentralized means of gathering intel on a given situation, verified by direct video evidence and eyewitness testimony. Countless moments of these atrocities have been documented for the world to see. Russian state media, on the other hand, speaks of Ukraine in apocalyptic terms, dismisses every atrocity as being perpetuated by “crisis actors”, and denies the legitimacy of Ukraine’s very existence as an independent nation, while the bodies of their own dead soldiers are quietly shipped home, if they ever come home at all. These narratives have spread beyond their own borders, and come to dominate the western far right, as well as many Marxist-Leninist circles.

This is not to say that Ukraine is entirely without sin. The Azov Battalion, an infamous Ukrainian national guard regiment with neonazi symbols and members, has been documented greasing their bullets with pig fat before going into battle against Muslim Chechen soldiers. President Zelensky has called repeatedly for NATO to institute a No-Fly Zone, a decision that would precipitate a drastic escalation of the conflict and possibly lead to a third world war. Anyone who refuses conscription is imprisoned or worse. And, lest it be forgotten, Ukrainian border guards have repeatedly and openly discriminated against nonwhite (and especially African and MENA) residents attempting to flee an active warzone. These are acts for which those responsible must face fair consequences.

But Russia shall not be the judge, jury, and executioner. For whatever problems Ukraine may have, Russia will not solve them, certainly not with atrocities of its own. The far-right ethnonationalist philosophy of Eurasianism has taken hold in the Russian government and guides Putin’s foreign policy, and Russia regularly deploys neonazi militias of its own abroad. If moral prescriptions must be applied, then there may not be a “good” side in this conflict, but there certainly is a bad one.

Do not get easily swept up into the manufacturing consent machine of an imperialist power. Think critically about what media and informational sources you engage with. It is paramount to do so in an age such as this. What may be the last hurrah of American geopolitical relevance is dawning as a result of Russia’s new status as a pariah state, and the narratives coming out of this conflict will have direct generational repercussions for tens of millions of people.

Solidarity with the victims of imperialist aggression everywhere.

War is War: The Normalization of War in the Global South

banzai — Fri, 01 Apr 2022 14:42:28 -0700

Art by @thosebeyonddrunk

Over the past few months, we’ve seen the West come together and condemn Russia for its atrocities in Ukraine. Within days of the invasion into Ukraine, we saw sanctions introduced, travel restrictions set, and businesses pulling out of Russia. Multiple Western nations have donated billions of dollars and weaponry to Ukraine. It’s interesting to observe how the West decides which crises are worthy of foreign aid.

But, where were all of these nations during the Taliban’s takeover in Afghanistan? Or the Saudi-led attacks in Yemen? Or when the Israelis kick Palestinians out from their own homes? The list of nations abandoned by the West goes on.

Let’s take a look at Afghanistan’s situation. By the end of August 2021, just a month after US troops were pulled out of the nation, the Taliban had taken over. The Taliban’s takeover led to the displacement of millions of innocent people and other human rights issues.

Comparing international response towards the Ukrainian and Afghan invasions exposes the hypocrisy of the West, or perhaps the overall desensitized attitude towards non-whites. Our news feeds have been flooded by images of destroyed buildings and people hiding in bomb shelters ever since the invasion took place, a reality many Afghans, Syrians, Iraqis and Palestinians have been living through for decades. Not only has media coverage of these crises differed greatly, but so has the response of Western nations to refugees. As of early April, over 4 million refugees have fled from Ukraine, with most fleeing into western Europe. The United Kingdom started a family visa program to help Ukrainians who have extended family residing in the UK. The United States has been easing restrictions for Ukrainians stranded at the Mexican border. Although it’s great to see nations opening their borders for the Ukrainian people, it’s time to change the way the West responds to refugees of color. It’s not just Afghan refugees that weren’t met with the same response that Ukrainians received: Middle Eastern, Latin American and African victims of war are often met with stricter immigration regulations, harsher visa requirements and militarized borders.

In March, the United States said they would accept 100,000 Ukrainian refugees. Over the past 20 years, the United States has resettled about 97,000 Afghan refugees. This double standard that Western nations hold against the global south (nations that have less economic development - including most of Asia, Africa, Latin America, South America and Oceania) has to stop. War is war, if you’re going to condemn it then you have to condemn it everywhere. The way displaced people are treated should not be dependent on their religion, skin color or any other factor. For centuries, the United States has restricted the amount of refugees from entering, with reasons usually rooted in bigoted and racist justification: first the employment restrictions against the Irish, then the ban of Chinese immigrants, and now the selectivness over which refugees should be granted entry.

Another thing to take notice of is the hypocrisy of the West. Take the example of Israel; in March and April of 2022, the Israeli foreign minister publicly condemned Russia for the war crimes they have committed in Ukraine, specifically condemning the killing of civilians and the illegal invasion of Ukraine. Isn’t this exactly what Israel is doing to Palestine? Israeli forces have been illegally entering into the state of Palestine and Palestinian controlled land for over 70 years, displacing people from their homes, and killing civilians. The West is quick to condemn Russia for committing these atrocities (and rightfully so), yet they turn a blind eye to Israel committing the same crimes. Once again, war is war, and nations cannot be selective about when or where they denounce it.

A final thing to take into account is the difference in word choice that Western media uses to describe these conflicts. When describing an attack in a white country, the media talks about how “unexpected” the event was. When describing an attack in a black or brown country, the media strips humanity out of the issue by resorting to casual racism and bigotry. A CBS News anchor was recently under fire for saying, “But this [Kyiv] isn’t a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan […] You know, this is a relatively civilized, relatively European.” ‘Civilized’? This is yet another dehumanization of people of color in mainstream Western and American media. Downplaying the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, while comparing them to an equally devastating war in Ukraine, is completely irresponsible. Although this particular news correspondent did receive extensive backlash for his backwards and bigoted thinking, there are so many Americans that think in the same way. No matter where one stands politically, there is a sense of normalcy of war in black and brown nations.

Over the course of my life, and probably yours, there has been war in the Middle East, civil war in Africa, and major political instability in Latin America. In many of these conflicts, the United States, the United Kingdom or France has intervened in some form, only resulting in negative effects for the inhabitants of these places. The United States has much to be blamed for wars in the Middle East and the political instability of Latin America. France has caused political and historical damage to the entirety of western Africa. And then there’s the British, who managed to colonize a quarter of the world’s land mass, yet they still don’t use seasoning on their food. For the past several centuries, Western imperialism and intervention has consistently guaranteed a political and humanitarian shitshow.

Returning to the hypocrisy of the West’s response to war in the global south versus the rest of the world, how many more humanitarian crises are needed before they understand that war anywhere is unacceptable? No lives are expendable, and they should not be treated as such. How many more Kiev’s and white cities need to be attacked before we understand that all war is bad no matter who starts it or who the victims are? All war is evil; selectively choosing who deserves refuge based on their identities is equally evil. Skin color, religion or any part of a person’s identity should not be a deciding factor for granting refuge from conflict. Whether someone is fleeing from Honduras, Libya, Afghanistan or Ukraine, all people deserve the same humanity and refuge.

In no way am I trying to compare tragedies, but am simply bringing light to an inconsistency in international response.

The difference in treatment of conflict by the West extends further than the monetary contribution of the west as these biases have seeped in our day-to-day media. When describing an attack in a white country, the media talks about how “unexpected” the event was. When describing an attack in a black or brown country, the media strips humanity out of the issue by resorting to casual racism and bigotry. A CBS News anchor was recently under fire for referring to Kiev as a civilized place, whilst adding his own inappropriate commentary, “But this [city] isn’t a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan […] You know, this is a relatively civilized, relatively European.¹” Civilized? This is one of many similar occurrences that have happened across American media, regardless of political bias and viewership. This is yet another attempt at the dehumanization of people of color in mainstream Western media. Downplaying the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, while comparing them to an equally devastating war in Ukraine, is completely irresponsible. Although this particular news correspondent did receive extensive backlash for his behavior, many get away with this sort of backwards and bigoted behavior.

Footnotes

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/27/western-media-coverage-ukraine-russia-invasion-criticism ↩︎

An Apology

J. Ellis — Fri, 04 Mar 2022 00:00:00 -0700

Originally published to Instagram

Following the feedback we received today, we have been carefully considering the response to our initial publication and the following artist’s statement, and we apologize. We apologize for the harm that our actions inflicted, and we have spent much of today reflecting as an organization. We have read every single one of your comments, and we know an apology is not enough. We at the Insurgent recognize that we are predominantly white, therefore we have a heightened responsibility to dismantle racism and hold ourselves accountable when we perpetuate anti-Blackness. Moving forward, we will show you steps that we are taking to ensure greater accountability, credibility, and equity in our collective. Thank you to all who engaged with this issue and demanded better from us; we are listening to your criticism and working to address our organization’s inadequacies. Please continue to reach out with your concerns. We will leave the image and the article up for transparency about our complicity.

Image available here

Original Article (with image removed) available here

ASUO President & Senate Approve Handover of EMU to Admin

J. Ellis — Thu, 10 Feb 2022 00:00:00 -0700

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

In a shocking collapse of student autonomy at UO, it appears that the EMU Student Union and its associated funding has been given over to administration control. Sources say that the decision to hand over $17 million of the I-Fee budget was reached by ASUO President Isaiah Boyd. A previous version of this release falsely stated that Boyd made the decision without Senate approval, but the minutes for the Jan. 29th meeting show that the Senate unanimously voted in favor of the new budget for the 2022-2023 year. Historically the UO administration has sought to gain control of the EMU’s prime real estate, but generations of student leadership have managed to maintain the space's autonomy under student control. Though student control of the space has declined as the administration has taken a more active role in the hiring of staff, three ASUO senators still hold positions on the EMU board. With the change to administrative control these elected ASUO positions will likely be eliminated.

Inexplicably, the release date of the Daily Emeraldstory revealing the transfer of the EMU and its budget to admin was delayed by almost two weeks from its finalization on January 29th. ASUO affiliates and politically active students expressed bewilderment and rage upon learning the news on February 8th. What can be done to reverse the deal or even learn the full extent of its impact is unknown at this time. The deal seems to have been rolled into the budget process for this year but senators aware of the initial proposal had insisted on conditions protecting funding for student clubs and other programs. What sources say is that these initial negotiations were ongoing when Senate President Isaiah Boyd revealed that the deal had already been finalized.

Recent SEIU Union negotiations have secured a pay raise for classified staff in the EMU. These routine labor negotiations have increased the EMU’s budget and created a shortfall in this year's I-fee funding model. The administration’s scheme to place the EMU’s $17 million budget under its control would supposedly relieve this shortfall. In truth, by dividing the I-Fee into two separate budget lines it can increase student activity fees above 5% without facing review by the state’s Higher Education Coordination Commission (HECC). Additionally, these fee increases would be implemented by the administration's TFAB committee, who also established the disastrous Guaranteed Tuition model designed to prevent budget review by the HECC. Most importantly, the act of putting the EMU under admin control is likely a part of a larger union busting strategy. Increased administration control over EMU employees is likely to result in degraded labor conditions and firings.

Students have struggled to understand how President Isaiah Boyd could have willingly ceded so much power to a comically corrupt university administration. At the height of the pandemic the administration put huge pressure on Boyd to spend $1.7 million in I-fee money on a problematic athletics ticket contract. Boyd sent out an SOS email to the entire student body and rallied a decisive backlash against administration pressure tactics and his professional handlers. The student senate then organized a comprehensive pandemic relief package for students and Boyd defended the proposal like a champ in front of an exasperated Board of Trustees. Never was it clearer that UO’s Nike athletics brand was the number one priority then at that Board of Trustees meeting as they condescendingly questioned Boyd. If Boyd was under pressure, he could have called on the student body to support him as he had done previously. If budget concerns were that grievous then a serious discussion should have taken place about revisiting the precedent of not funding the $1.7 million athletics ticket contract.

Editor's note: It is Insurgent policy to not target groups and demographics without power, of which most students are a part. The only exceptions to this policy are the ASUO President and the Student Trustee.

What has happened is that the largest asset that students control on campus has been given away. The implications of this are manifold and dire. Despite claims that the arrangement can be reversed in next year’s budget cycle, it is highly unlikely that once the building is in administration hands they will let it go. UO also has a toxic tradition of leasing property to Phil Knight. Once under his control he can commission non-union construction projects and then stick the university with luxury maintenance costs and a community overwhelmed by gentrification.

Outrage over the deal spilled over into ASUO’s Wednesday February 9th senate meeting. Gallery speakers took the floor to express their concerns and were met with bureaucratic obstinance. No further details about the EMU’s transfer to administrative control have been discovered at this time.

Solidarity,

The Student Insurgent

CORRECTIONS

Our initial press release implied that the budget decision was determined solely by ASUO President Isaiah Boyd. According to the Budget Bonanza Meeting notes, the ASUO Senate unanimously voted to approve the budget. This is contrary to initial sentiments shared with The Insurgent, but demonstrates that Boyd ultimately, to some extent, had Senate support. It appears that the Senate possessed at least some prior knowledge of the budget cut, but only offered slight pushback in the Jan 29th meeting that Boyd attended. It remains unclear to what extent the Senators were aware of the implications of the approval of this budget. There is no evidence that the Senators have been discouraged from speaking on the matter, though there is speculation that some may be reluctant to speak out due to the upcoming elections. This is a developing story and we will continue to update with accurate information as it progresses.

“Aquí no hay negros”: Black Historical Erasure in Argentina

Rowan F. F. Glass — Tue, 01 Feb 2022 14:42:28 -0700

Art by R. Bliss

Argentina has a problem with racism. As one of the whitest¹ countries in Latin America, Argentina has done a poor job of accounting for the histories and contributions of its non-white populations, both historically and at present. This is especially true for Argentina’s Black population, so much that many white Argentines will tell you that “aquí no hay negros,” “there are no Blacks here,” while just last year Argentina’s president caught flak after repeating an old saying,“Mexicans came from the Indians, Brazilians came from the jungle, but we Argentines came from the boats, and those boats came from Europe.”

Such commonplace statements, although plainly expressed and honestly believed by those who repeat them, constitute a pernicious and historically tenacious lie. They serve to obscure and erase the indelible mark that Blacks have left on Argentine history and culture since Spanish and Portuguese slavers first forced them across the Atlantic in chains. In fact, Afro-Argentines are integral to the story of many of the most important symbols of Argentine culture and nationhood, from the ubiquitous tango to the rugged gauchos of the Pampas. Despite these contributions, the nation-building project of Argentina’s creole elite has sought to construct a national identity based on European heritage and to erase Black Argentines’ role in the country’s history. Let’s begin to do justice to the story of Afro-Argentines by highlighting some aspects of their history.

Like elsewhere in the Spanish Empire in the Americas, the importation of Africans to Argentina was a direct response to the need for a cheap workforce in the wake of the demographic devastation of Indigenous populations incurred by genocide, conquest, and disease. Most enslaved Africans were sent to the mines and fields in Peru and Mexico that became the mainstay of the extractive economy of the colonial period. Throughout most of the colonial period, Argentina was something of a backwater, being sparsely populated and without significant economic activity. Buenos Aires, however, as one of the most important Spanish port cities on the Atlantic coast of South America, became an important slave market early in the trade. Many enslaved Africans arrived by ship there to be transported inland or transferred to other colonies. A 1778 census reported that in agriculturally important provinces such as Santiago del Estero, Catamarca, and Salta, among others, Blacks constituted a racial plurality (the same census reported that Blacks stood at 37% of the national population). In these peripheral provinces, as in the vast central plains of the Argentine Pampas, many Blacks became gauchos, a type of rural horseman analogous to the North American cowboy. Most gauchos, like many cowboys, were non-white, as racial mixing between Europeans, Indigenous people, and Blacks was common in such frontier zones. Many Black gauchos would play a seminal role as cavalry in the battles of the Argentine War of Independence and later wars throughout the nineteenth century.

A significant number of Africans also remained in Buenos Aires, where by the mid-nineteenth century they constituted more than a quarter of the city’s growing population; here they primarily worked as domestic servants for the white elite, though some made a living as merchants and artisans. Here, too, Blacks were important militarily; a mixed Black and Indigenous militia called the Batallón de Pardos y Morenos assisted in the defense of Buenos Aires against two attempted British invasions in 1806 and 1807. Elevated to the status of regiment in 1810, this unit would go on to fight in the War of Independence that resulted in the proclamation of the Republic of Argentina in 1816.

At first, independence brought few substantive changes for Afro-Argentines. As slavery was not abolished in Argentina until 1853, it remained widespread among Afro-Argentines for decades after independence (although after 1813 freedom was guaranteed to the children of slaves). Institutional discrimination, of course, remained widespread even after the abolition of slavery. In response to little official representation and recognition of Afro-Argentines and their specific concerns, Blacks began publishing their own magazines and campaigning for greater rights. Yet as Argentina became subject to the second largest wave of immigration in the world (second only to the U.S.) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Argentine government increasingly leaned into European identities to define the national character. This was a time when the creole elite, rich off exports of frozen beef and wheat from the Pampas and with intimate business relations with British investors, looked to Europe, and especially France, to define themselves. Elites of this time spoke French, dressed in Parisian fashions, and redesigned the historic center of Buenos Aires in the image of European neoclassicism. Amid such changes there developed a concerted effort to erase Argentina’s Black history.

It was also in the 1910s and 1920s when the Argentine elite, seeking to consolidate a national identity for the ethnically heterogeneous and majority immigrant country, began to identify tango with Argentine culture—moreover, it would soon become one of the country’s chief cultural exports and national symbols. Ironically, because the contributions of Afro-Argentines to the development of tango, beginning in the 1880s, cannot be overlooked. The word itself is commonly thought to derive from one of several Niger-Congo languages once spoken by Africans in Buenos Aires. By the late colonial period the term was being used to refer to subversive gatherings of slaves to dance and play music, similar to the candombe, an African style of dance and music still common along the Río de la Plata. By the time tango made its way to Europe and the U.S. in 1913, its partially Black origins were cause for horror on the part of racist journalists covering the subversive new dance. Initially, in the first decades of tango’s development in the lower-class neighborhoods of Buenos Aires populated by non-whites and poor immigrants, the dance inspired the same horror and disgust in Argentina’s creole elite, who associated it with brothels, degeneracy, and vice (naturally, all things said elite also associated with Blacks). It was only after the dance was popularized in Paris, and from there exported to the rest of Europe and the U.S., that Argentine elites themselves began to dance it—now that it had been adecentado, literally “made decent,” by Europeans. Tango had to be sanitized—and the role of Afro-Argentines in its development erased—before it could be incorporated as a symbol of Argentine culture. Has the same kind of white appropriation of Black culture while erasing its history not happened countless times in U.S. history?²

How has it happened that only in recent decades have Afro-Argentines emerged from their long invisibilization to assert their existence? One answer relates to the failure of the process of blanqueamiento, or “whitening,” a eugenicist policy that sought to reduce and eventually eliminate Argentina’s non-white population through racial mixing with whites. If the one-drop rule in the U.S. had it that anyone with any amount of African ancestry was Black, then in Argentina the opposite was theoretically true: to have any amount of white ancestry was to make one white, and to be white was to have access to Whiteness and its privileges. Thus, as a matter of survival in a racist system which eventually came to deny even the existence of Blacks in Argentina, many Afro-Argentines sought to distance themselves from Blackness; whether of dark skin or light, most would no longer identify as Black. But the promise that doing so would result in equal social status turned out to be utterly untrue—Argentina’s racial disparity remains as severe as anywhere, while the slang term _negro _is still used in the local dialect as a derogatory way to describe people of the lower and working classes, Black or not; it also bears connotations of criminality.

The failure of such attempts at assimilation to equalize racial disparity, as well as increasing discourse around issues of race in the global context, have prompted Afro-Argentines to proudly reclaim their heritage and histories. The same has happened with other non-white identities in Argentina, including the diverse Indigenous peoples whose histories and cultures have similarly been long invisibilized by the hegemonic narrative proclaiming that “Argentines descend from the boats.” The daunting challenge confronting the subjects of such invisibilized identities is now to prove to Argentine Whiteness what it has long denied: that aquí sí hay negros.

Notes

Note that “white” can mean something different in Latin American contexts than in the U.S., given these regions’ different histories and constructions of race. Although most Argentines are of primarily European descent, many who consider themselves white might come to the U.S. and find their Whiteness revoked on account of their nationality or the varying degrees of racial admixture common in Latin America. Whiteness, as in U.S. history also, is contextual. ↩︎
For comparison, there are certain similarities between tango and jazz in terms of the contexts in which they developed. Both are examples of musical syncretism taking cues from both African and European traditions (but jazz is more substantially Black than is tango), and both developed in lower-class neighborhoods of major river deltas. Both underwent a process of being “made decent” (read: deracialized) before being co-opted by Whiteness as national symbols of their respective countries. ↩︎

ASUO Vetos Threat to Student Autonomy

Eric Howanietz — Tue, 01 Feb 2022 14:42:28 -0700

In an emergency ASUO meeting at 10:30am on Friday Feb 18th the Senate vetoed the I-Fee budget previously delivered to senate by ASUO President Isaiah Boyd. ASUO also voted on an extensive resolution condemning a decision made between Boyd and Dr. Kevin Marbury VP of student life to remove the EMU from the I-Fee budget and dramatically decrease student autonomy. The decision was unilaterally made by ASUO President Boyd to hand control of the EMU to the administration but was rejected on the last day possible after being delivered to the Senate. The last-minute resolution and veto were the culmination of a heated week of meetings and actions by multiple student groups, senators, and activists.

What started with an inexplicably delayed Daily Emerald article released on Feb 8th mentioning the loss of the EMU, quickly exploded the next day at ASUO’s Wed Feb 9th meeting. Audience members called out the Senate and demanded ASUO President Isaiah Boyd’s resignation. Commenters spoke over the banging gavel of the Senate President and an attempt was made to clear the room. Over the next week Senators learned the full extent of the EMU’s loss and it became clear that they had voted on a budget that was missing over half of its traditional funding. A coalition of student groups and current & former senators began the process of unraveling what was revealed to be an overwhelming seizure of student assets by the administration.

On Tuesday Feb 15th over a dozen student activists crashed the Tuition & Fee Advisory Board (TFAB) meeting. Dr. Kevin Marbury publicly confirmed half a dozen times that the decision to hand over the EMU was exclusively a conversation between himself and ASUO President Isaiah Boyd. Representatives of the Oregon Student Association (OSA) seeking to learn more about the situation were at the meeting. University President Michael Schill, and UO’s General Legal Counsel were also in attendance. Activists repeatedly held onto the mic and asked pointed questions about the deal, to which admin stood behind the legality of the EMU’s unilateral transfer.

Activists found themselves completely vindicated in the wake of Marbury’s public affirmations. After what had been a week of organizers trying to walk back some of the most heated proclamations by radical activists, the Feb 15th TFAB meeting now confirmed their worst fears. The administration was openly making a move to take the EMU away from student control and ASUO President Isaiah Boyd had fully cooperated with this effort.

As activists, organizers, and dissenting senators redoubled their efforts to counter the unfolding EMU transfer, a meeting of the EMU’s governing body (EMU Board) convened on Thursday Feb 17th. This Zoom meeting was also largely directed towards Dr. Kevin Marbury, where he emphasized the administration’s opinion that the student body needed to, “trust the admin to have students’ best interests at heart.” Marbury reiterated his previous opinion that ASUO President Boyd and himself had sole discretion to transfer the EMU from ASUO’s control. Many student members of the EMU board were uncomfortable with the principle of the EMU’s transfer. They were even more disturbed by the lack of transparency and student oversight in which the dramatic loss of student power had occurred. Though the EMU Board would retain a measure of student control over the EMU after the transfer, it would be a fraction of the previous authority that students held over the budgetary process.

Student members of the EMU Board have become increasingly discouraged by decreasing transparency and loss of student power on the board. Many problems have stemmed from the obstinance of EMU Director Laurie Woodward not being receptive to student concerns or listening to their opinions. At the Feb 17th EMU Board meeting, students were directly challenged by Marbury on the grounds that, “Of course you can trust us, you work with Laurie every day.” This was not an encouraging premise for assurances of student autonomy moving forward. Student members of the EMU Board came out of the meeting determined to halt the impending transfer.

The next day on Friday Feb 18th ASUO convened for an emergency meeting at 10:30am. A list of over a dozen commentators strongly reiterated points relating to the dramatic loss of student power and autonomy that would occur if the current budget structure was allowed to move forward. One ASUO Senate alumni who graduated ten years ago spoke on how there has been a historical precedent of admin attempting to gain control of the EMU building. During his previous tenure on ASUO, the admin had tried to pull the same tricks to gain control of the EMU’s prime real estate. Many emphasized that once the EMU building was given over to admin control it would be nearly impossible to get back. Another student, Courtney Kaltenbach, cited the example of the student service Duck Rides being co-opted by administration control until its original mission was bastardized and it simply became an extension of UOPD.

ASUO voted to veto the budget and delivered a detailed resolution condemning the attempted unilateral removal of the EMU from the I-Fee budget. This will now trigger a new budgetary process known as “Budget Bonanza” and senators will have to reorganize the budget to include the EMU and accommodate the shortfall. All of this will have to occur before the budget is delivered to the Board of Trustees (BOT) in March. ASUO President Isaiah Boyd will have to answer questions from the BOT regarding the budget. He has dutifully done so before in defense of pandemic relief packages for students and the cutting of a problematic $1.7 million athletics ticket giveaway. But after calls for his resignation and the veto of a massive deal he personally facilitated, there may be questions as to the sincerity his testimony will provide in convincing the BOT to accept ASUO’s new budget.

Despite there being a $280K shortfall in this year’s EMU budget due to routine labor negotiations, the admin’s amputation scheme to remove the EMU from the I-Fee budget was not widely considered a reasonable solution in an over $17 million budget. The cost to student autonomy is an $8 million reduction in the assets that students’ most democratic body (ASUO) has oversight over. It is also widely understood that the division of funding lines would have facilitated student fee increases without triggering review by the state’s regulatory body the Higher Education Coordinating Commission (HECC).

In the resolution passed on Friday Feb 18th the final language details how if no agreement can be made then the state’s regulatory body should become involved to settle the dispute. It reads as follows:

FURTHERMORE LET IT BE RESOLVED, if the Student Senate, ASUO President and the Board of Trustees do not agree on a proposed budget, the Higher Education Coordination Committee can be involved to settle the agreement.

In a ten-day period starting on Feb 9th and ending with the resolution & veto on Feb 18th it appears that students have succeeded in an initial battle to preserve student autonomy over the EMU. How the coming weeks will play out concerning the new budget, the Board of Trustees, arbitration of the HECC, and even the ongoing awareness of the Oregon Student Association on this matter is at this time unclear. Organizers, activists, and senators are hopeful that their initial check against a discrete administration power grab has been successful. Many students now fully aware of the situation, are prepared to launch direct actions if the student democratic process fails to safeguard student autonomy over the EMU.

Editor’s note: It is Insurgent policy to not target groups and demographics without power, of which most students are a part. The only exceptions to this policy are the ASUO President and the Student Trustee.

*This article was edited on March 5, 2022. An earlier version wrongly stated: “The EMU Board only has seven elected student positions, the rest being a collection of appointed students, appointed employees, and full-time staff. A number of these board positions are directly appointed by the University President Michael Schill, giving the administration a significant balance of power in the expanded budgetary powers of the EMU Board.”

A correction was made made that clarifies the structure of the EMU Board:

“The Board’s current make up is as follows:

2 EMU Student Reps, 2 ASUO Student Reps , 4 At Large Student Positions, 1 ASUO Executive Designee Student, 3 ASUO Student Senator Seats, 1 EMU Program Admin Adult - currently a rep from the Craft Center, Laurie Woodward - EMU Director, Rick Haught - EMU Director of Scheduling & Event Services, Jessi Steward - EMU Associate Director

No student board positions are appointed by President Schill- elections/appointments are run internally by existing student board members. Admin are not a part of the student election process. Additionally, while Laurie acts as an advising resource, as ASUO Senate similarly does, the EMU Board itself (students) are the ones to conduct budget hearings to create and present the budget for approval by Senate. It is a student centric process, informed (not dictated) by admin.”

Big Tom vs. Big Timber

Nicholas — Tue, 01 Feb 2022 14:42:28 -0700

With no given public notice, no required public comment period, and without objection from the Bureau of Land Management, the Roseburg based timber company Roseburg Forest Products (RFP) is moving forward with plans to cut a road through a section of old growth forest that under any other circumstances they would not be allowed to log. In the Big Tom area, not far from Drain, the proposed road cuts between four northern spotted owl nests. The road construction is set to take place in an area designated a Late Successional Reserve (LSR), a land allocation specifically set aside to ensure the natural, unimpeded development of old growth characteristics - characteristics that threatened species such as the northern spotted owl, the marbled murrelet, and the red tree vole depend on.

These species are found almost exclusively in old growth forests, and are all facing continued declines corresponding with loss of old growth. In the ‘90s, environmentalists were able to secure protections for old growth by leveraging the protections of the animals that depend on that old growth, in particular, the spotted owl. Hence, Late Successional Reserves.

Which brings us back to Roseburg Forest Products.

Late Successional Reserves are typically a no-log zone, but through utilizing Reciprocal Right-of-Way agreements, a company (RFP) can cut a road if they claim they need access to their land, LSR’s notwithstanding. And after the road’s cut what happens with all that timber? Well it’s sold to RFP of course! Allowing them to profit from logging that would otherwise never be permitted. This loophole stems from contracts between the BLM* and the logging industry dating back to the 1930’s and put into its current form in 1964 - predating the Endangered Species Act, and long before the Northwest Forest Plan.

The cutting is scheduled during spotted owl breeding season, and being within 300 feet of the nests, it has biologists concerned. Included among them Janice Reid, owl biologist and President of Umpqua Watersheds.

“Pair bonding is occurring right now as spotted owls seek out a safe place to perform activities related to nesting and rearing young. Loud noises and removal of habitat can deter the owls from occupying the habitat and potentially expose them to predation.”

Janice Reid

Janice followed by emphasizing that the additional issue here is that regardless of spotted owl occupancy, the intended purpose for this area is the protection of the ecosystem as a whole; including other species closely associated with old growth, such as the marbled murrelet, for which this area has not been surveyed.

The proposed road is planned to connect to BLM road 22-7-2.3, cutting directly through spotted owl and marbled murrelet critical habitat and the LSR. If RFP were to redraw the routing to connect to 21-7-23.1 (or 22-7-2.1), it could give a much wider berth to the owl core area and reduce infringement on the reserve. In fact, the biologist tasked with writing the project’s ESA Species Wildlife Review, Heather Wise, put forward as her primary recommendation that an alternate route be chosen.

“As designed, the proposed road construction on BLM will bisect a recently occupied northern spotted owl nest patch and core area, as well as remove northern spotted owl NRF [nesting, roosting, and foraging] habitat and critical habitat, marbled murrelet nesting habitat and critical habitat, and potentially result in the loss of eggs or individuals during the nesting season.”

Heather Wise

This is a recommendation that the company is under no obligation to follow, from a review that, in practice, they treat only as a formality. On the side of the Bureau of Land Management, it seems that the scrutiny for the placement of this road, or even the need for this road, is almost nonexistent. Even if the BLM were to object, just as the company is under no obligation to follow the recommendations of the biologist report, they would have no obligation to adhere to any objection by the BLM either. This is a long outdated loophole designed only to serve the timber industry which must be done away with if we are to prevent its further exploitation.

On February 5th I walked the length of the proposed road in a small group led by Janice and her husband Kasey, who serves as the Executive Director for Umpqua Watersheds. It was sobering standing under these trees - multiple measuring over 70 inches in diameter - knowing that there was little we could do to keep them alive. Some of these trees stood even before colonizers occupied this land. Before land stewardship took the form of profit and extraction. Before road-cutting was even something these trees had to worry about. Now, in a reserve established for their protection, they are soon to be felled per the will of one timber company.

*Bureau of Land Management, not to be confused with Black Lives Matter which is also abbreviated to BLM

DEMOCRATIZE UO’S OFFICIAL STATEMENT ON THE ASUO SENATE’S VETO OF ASUO PRESIDENT BOYD’S DECISION TO TRANSFER THE EMU OUT OF THE I-FEE TO ADMIN

Democratize UO — Tue, 01 Feb 2022 14:42:28 -0700

On February 8th, 2022 the Daily Emerald first reported on the decision by ASUO President Isaiah Boyd to transfer the budget and authority of the EMU out of the ASUO’s Incidental Fee budget to the University of Oregon administration. This development came out of nowhere and was not reported on until the decision was already made. The backroom deal between President Boyd and VP of Student Life Kevin Marbury had zero transparency or public discussion and surprised even the members of the ASUO Senate who were also not briefed on the move to remove the EMU from the I-Fee budget until after it had already occurred. Attempting to hand the EMU over to the admin was a striking and shocking undermining of student autonomy on this campus and must be strongly condemned.

After news of this deal came out, campus activists; including our organization and comrades from the Student Insurgent, UO Young Democratic Socialists of America, the Oregon Student Association, and Climate Justice League; quickly sprung into action to respond and unravel how this happened. Without the pressure put onto ASUO and VP Kevin Marbury, we likely would not have seen the ASUO Senate take decisive action in the 11th hour during an emergency meeting on the morning of February 18th to use their power to veto the decision. We wish to commend the ASUO Senators who voted in favor of vetoing the decision and for a resolution condemning how the deal was made.

However, we feel compelled to note that the EMU drama has helped reveal the fundamental structural failings of the ASUO to properly represent the interests of students at the University of Oregon. The institution of the ASUO was intentionally designed to limit the amount of power and voice that students have. Additionally, despite there being some well-intentioned people working within it, the ASUO often creates an environment that encourages toxicity, secrecy, and an overly-individualistic focus on the professional advancement of those involved instead of seeking to uplift the opinions and interests of the whole student body. President Boyd’s unilateral deal on the EMU and the actions of those who sought to shut down internal and external dissent in the aftermath shows that very clearly. Moreover, with its confusing structure and processes and lack of power, most students feel disconnected from the ASUO because it’s irrelevant to their daily lives. Recent elections only getting turnout in single-digit percentages is a searing indictment on the legitimacy of the institution and its limited authority. We need to work towards creating alternative avenues for students, and the wider campus community, to gain more substantive power at UO. Working towards democratizing the Board of Trustees to include directly elected students, faculty, and staff in the decision-making process at UO would be a major step in this direction. The unionization of all labor on campus, including student workers and student athletes, is also an imperative part of this overall vision for change at UO.

Finally, we must make two calls to action in the wake of this mess. Democratize UO calls for the immediate resignation of ASUO President Isaiah Boyd, ASUO Senate President Claire O’Connor, and anyone else in the ASUO who supported this decision, sought to excuse it, or tried to suppress dissent against it. They have lost the confidence of the student body and do not deserve to represent us. We also call on students who seek change to consider running for positions within the ASUO. We acknowledge that having like-minded individuals in power will not magically fix things, but it will make actions like this less likely in the future.

El Violador Eres Tú

Fern — Tue, 01 Feb 2022 14:42:28 -0700

Despite the frigid cold and the threat of rain, community members gathered the evening of Valentine’s Day on the stairs of the Eugene federal building for an impassioned rally calling to end the war on women’s bodies.

Led by Erika Lincango Kitu-Panzeleo, founder BIWOC Rising, the rally made space for speakers and victims of sexual violence to share their stories and receive support from audience members. Speakers included were Dr. Luthi Whitebear, Violet Johnson, Nicolaj Byrdman, and Kat Borja.

The night began with Erika directing participants in making a circular arrangement hand woven out of roses. The arrangment was made to “honor the life of our sisters, because it represents missing and murdered indigenous women from all directions, from all paths of life,” said Erika, a teacher in the 4J school district.

Roses are placed to honor those lost.

In the center of the courtyard sat a defiled wedding dress, an art piece made as an homage to the rape culture perpetuated by Catholic marriages. Artist Kat Borja destroyd her former wedding dress as an act of catharsis, covering the dress in red handprints and pounded nails into the dress.

Borja also brought candles for attendees to light and say a prayer. Each candle and color memorialized transgender individuals murdered in 2021.

The main feature of the rally was the performance of the international feminist dance and song called El Violador Eres Tú, also known as Un violador en tu camino. Translating to the Rapist is you, the performance calls attention to the fact that rapists are everywhere in a community: doctors, teachers, parents, politicians. Guests were encouraged to wear provocative nightwear to fight against victim blaming that shifts blame to the survivor for wearing promiscuous clothing.

To finish out the night, attendees participated in a small demonstration at the Wayne Morse free speech plaza. Chanting the lyrics to El Violador Eres Tú, shouts echoed down the streets of Eugene this Valentine’s Day in solidarity with sisters impacted by sexual and gender violence. Learn how you can support this movement by following BIWOC Rising on Instagram and Facebook to stay tuned for more events and demonstrations.

Eugene Starbucks Workers Fight for Union

Solidarity News — Tue, 01 Feb 2022 14:42:28 -0700

On January 6, workers at the Starbucks store on 29th and Willamette in Eugene filed for a union election, the first store to do so in Oregon. They joined Starbucks Workers United which has organized 100 shops across the country. This fast growing movement was sparked by workers in Buffalo, New York; that formed the first ever Starbucks union on December 9th.

Workers at three more local Starbucks stores at, 7th &Washington, Oakway Mall, and Franklin & Villard, joined in by filing for union elections at the end of January. On February 4th, workers at two more stores additionally filed for union elections, the UO EMU and Delta & Green Acres. Eugene now has six shops is currently tied with fellow college town Ann Arbor for the most stores to file for union elections, according to NLRB filings presented by the website Union Elections Data.

Workers in Eugene have been supported by Eugene Springfield Solidarity Network (ESSN) in their organizing efforts. ESSN organized a community support rally on January 27 in front of the 29th & Willamette where around 75 people showed up. The local labor movement was well represented, including members of GTFF, Teamsters, SEIU, AFSCME, IBEW, and IATSE.

ESSN has started a GoFundMe to help support organizing workers in paying their bills. Workers have spoken out about not receiving a livable wage and rumors of hours cuts facing union organizers.

Starbucks has already shown that they are ready to use all of their union busting tactics in the toolbox. According to NLRB filings, the company has hired at least 30 attorneys from Littler Mendelson to stall union elections. In 2016 Littler attorneys had an average rate of $550/hr. Additionally corporate has been sending down people from management to have two-on-one conversations with workers to dissuade them from joining the union.

On February 8, Starbucks fired seven workers in Memphis that were part of a unionization effort there. Workers across the country stood up in solidarity with the workers including in Eugene, where workers and community members spoke out on this issue on February 18th.

“Starbucks doesn’t treat us like partners, but we’re willing to treat each other like partners.”

–Jessica Jaszewski, a worker at the Franklin & Villard store on why she showed up in solidarity for the Memphis workers.

Fuck You, Pay Me!

UO Student Workers — Tue, 01 Feb 2022 14:42:28 -0700

UOSW Ballot Initiative Statement & Updates

Over the past few months, UO Student Workers in collaboration with UOYDSA have been disseminating our Student Labor Survey and meeting with student workers in hopes of collecting stories and opinions about the material conditions of workers at the University of Oregon in order to produce a ballot measure that would expand worker power. Well, the results are in, and they don’t look good: poverty wages, harassment from management and customers, insufficient COVID-19 precautions, shitty scheduling, the list goes on.

Our proposed ballot measure was molded by the testimonials we received during our survey campaign. Based on recurring grievances and negative experiences expressed to us we’ve compiled a Student Workers’ Rights Directive to ASUO. To ensure that ASUO would allocate necessary resources to labor rights organizing on campus we need to ensure the organization is equipped to work on issues of labor or class. This necessitated the creation of explicit worker representation in the student senate, the executive staff, and the ASUO Constitution. Three Labor Senators, a Student Labor Director in the ASUO Executive, along with at large representatives, would work to achieve the goals listed below while engaging with student workers on campus. The Student Workers Rights Directive tells the student government to do the following:

Establish a living wage that is adjusted for the cost of tuition, textbooks, lost wages from the 25-hour work week cap, comparable local wages, and inflation.
Establish, in addition to current in-kind benefits for stipend student workers such as Resident Assistants, an hourly wage for hours worked.
Reestablish the Bias Response Team with the added mission and capacity for assisting student workers who experience harassment or conflict in their workplace before and alongside Human Resources.
Require hourly pay for job training and development.
Require an automatic 40 hours paid sick leave for students working during a pandemic, to be increased based on time worked.
Require hazard pay for students forced to work during a pandemic.
Provide appropriate Personal Protective Equipment for students and student workers.
Provide additional emergency response resources for student workers beyond the UO Police Department.
Establish a right to adjust payroll calendars from monthly to bi-weekly.
Recognize students’ collective negotiating power to set expectations for workplace standards, pay, and benefits.

The process of organizing through the student ballot has been a challenge. The ASUO Constitution Court has decided that ballot measure campaigns would need to collect exclusively electronic petitions which take a week to set up and would hamper our organizing efforts. In contrast, ASUO senators need only collect 5% the number of signatures we do and can use paper petitions. With these restrictions in place we’ve decided to collect upwards of 1200 student signatures and submit our measures to the ballot as referenda through the student senate. Even after we finish with the signature campaign we will be collecting student testimony to advocate further for student workers. Please, if you want to help us in our efforts, sign our petition, ask your friends to sign our petition, and spread our survey to workers you know.

While this ballot initiative is crucial to making institutionalized, concrete changes to the structure of ASUO and generating more autonomy for student workers in their workplaces, this work is all void without solid labor consciousness on campus and shrewd organizing strategy. If you are a student worker at the University of Oregon, we urge you, talk to your coworkers, and organize — there is power in numbers, and, as we’ve seen in worker survey responses, you are not alone in your struggles. Take back your workplace. What little student control over student workplaces we have is being stolen by administrative overreach and backroom dealing. In the EMU, we had a degree of ownership over our student workplace, which could have been expanded, but we may have lost our power there. As we see with the brave unionizing efforts of our comrades at the EMU Starbucks, when you discuss your working conditions, share your stories, and organize with one another you can stand in opposition to the corporate powers that be.

Justice for Jerrin: Benefit Show

Fern — Tue, 01 Feb 2022 14:42:28 -0700

This was the first show hosted by the Lorax Manor since the beginning of the pandemic, and was held with strict checking of vax cards. Masks were provided at the door for anyone who didn’t have their own, and wearing them was encouraged throughout the night.

Leading the show was DR/UNK, a hardcore drag punk band. Strobing colored lights set the stage for the expertly outfitted group. The packed crowd felt the vibe immediately and began moshing and headbanging. The vocalists had insane metal vocals that echoed throughout campus.

Second to the stage was local favorite Laundry. Toning it down from the previous act, they charmed the crowd with wavy beats.

The Lorax Manor hosted a benefit concert for Jerrin Hickman, a black father of two children, who was wrongfully incarcerated and has been serving time in the Oregon prison system for over a decade. The concert was headlined by DR/UNK, Laundry, and Candy Picnic. Proceeds from show tickets as well as art being sold at the door went to support lawyer fees.

Following their act, Imani Wolery, daughter of Jerrin, gave an impassioned speech thanking guests for their continued support. All proceeds from the show will be going to Imani’s grandmother to pay for the thousands of dollars of lawyer fees they currently face.

“I got my dad stripped away from me at the age of eight in December 2008…” Said Imani, “He should have never been accused, arrested, taken to trial, or convicted. My dad was misidentified by two young white women witnesses from West Linn who said, ‘All black men look the same.’ Their racism has now ruined our lives.” She exclaims, “I will not stop fighting until he is released an the state of Oregon is held accountable for convicting him and admits their fault in misconduct, racial prejudice, and misidentification in my dad’s case.”

Candy Picnic closed the show with a mellow, melodic end.

Keeping Things White: The Problem with Theory

Strawberry Jello — Tue, 01 Feb 2022 14:42:28 -0700

If you want to keep an organization white, do these things:

Demand a production level that doesn’t take into account the individual circumstance and stressors a person might be facing
Prioritize the outcome over the process
Assume you have shared beliefs and experiences
Value reason over emotion, masculine over feminine
Establish the Truth

From Hegel to Marx, to Engels, to Lenin.

How do we decide what is true?

Why theory?

“These new readers were still willing to look for validation in traditions incapable of keeping up with the pace of societal transformation.”

John-Baptiste Oduor for Foreign Policy

The future of radical thought is young, Black, Indigenous, disabled, and queer. Stop looking to academia for answers about power you can see in your own community and interactions. Academia is still keeping those populations out, by its very structure and function. Through the idolization of upper-middle class German philosophers and Soviet military clothing, we both center whiteness and increase inaccessibility to the ideas themselves. Although yes, I know the boots are sexy. But did Marx have any business becoming the mouthpiece for class struggle? By legitimizing some theorists because they’re dead white men, while we ignore the power analysis that the people at the bottom of these hierarchies and structures have to offer, we are aiding colonialism, white supremacy, patriarchy, and all other similar structures whose very bedrock is respectability politics and legitimacy.

What does it look like for lived experience to be valued over education, power, and prestige? I think it means cutting out the academic elitism— to value the political values spoken, sung, put in a meme, as highly or higher than classic theory. It’s not enough to diversify your authors of theory.

Organizing, writing, and theorizing for its own sake is a privilege for the middle-class socialists. So in that sense, they are staying true to Marx and Lenin. :) To get connected and have solidarity with non-white organizing, shift your focus to providing basic needs. Let’s keep our organizing real, tangible, and on the ground. There are radical BIPOC in our community, they just don’t want to work with us because of our compulsive white posturing. There’s a direct inverse relationship to the flashiness of your actions and its radical potential. What we really need are sustainable networks of food, water, healthcare, etc. that decrease our reliance on the state and allow us to distribute resources equitably. So if you have any practical skills, offer them for less than you can afford. If you don’t, learn them. Your time is better spent making sure that every single neighbor is housed and fed, than learning the difference between bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie. Because marginalized communities are marginalized in theory and in academia, we shouldn’t be asking how to make them fit in these spaces. Rather, ask why we are investing so much time and energy into things that are designed not to work for everyone? Let’s take a critical look at the institutions of oppression we are legitimizing.

Labor Updates from Solidarity News

Solidarity News — Tue, 01 Feb 2022 14:42:28 -0700

The last few months there has been an outstanding amount of labor activity from workers going on strike, winning new contracts, to seeking to form new unions. It is hard to keep up, even for a seasoned unionist. It has been invigorating, but there have also been losses.

In mid-December, City of Eugene workers a part of AFSCME Local 1724 won a new contract. It includes a 6% cost of living adjustment (COLA) wage increases for the first year of the contract which starts retroactively on July 1, 2021. Additionally, 60% of workers received pay grade increases.

At the beginning of the new year thousands of classified workers at Oregon’s universities began their new contract. The workers, represented by SEIU 503, gained a five-year contract. This was longer than what they were originally seeking, but were able to receive other concessions. Additionally, there is a contract reopener in 2023 where they can renegotiate wages among other things The new minimum wage for all SEIU workers across all campuses is $15/hr.

On January 6, workers at the Starbucks on 29th & Willamette in Eugene filed for a union election, becoming the first store in Oregon to do so. Workers were inspired the employees of the Buffalo, NY shop who organized to become the first ever Starbucks union in December. The workers movement, under the name Starbucks Workers United has been sweeping the country and has picked up a stronghold in Eugene, with workers at six shops in Eugene that have filed for a union election.

In addition to baristas, cannabis shop workers are working towards a union in town. Workers at Spacebuds The Dispensary and Flowr of Life filed for union elections in January.

Later in January, workers at McKenzie-Willamette Medical Center that are a part of SEIU 49 secured a new contract. Union members won average wage increases of 22% over the three-year lifespan of the contract after going on strike twice, two days in October and five days in December. The union however was not able to stem the outsourcing of 70 workers to a Texas based company, the main impetus of their first strike.

On midnight, February 18, local 4-J educators landed a tentative agreement with the school district. The Eugene Education Association (EEA) bargaining team secured a 4% COLA for each year of the three-year contract. EEA President Sabrina Gordon acknowledges that these rates are lower than the current 7% inflation rate the country is experiencing, but says that these are much better than other salary increases for the union over the last decade.

Lastly, workers at Planned Parenthood of Southwestern Oregon organized under SEIU 49 and ratified their first contract in February. Under the contract workers will receive an average 15% raise and a wage floor at $18/hr.

Lesbian Languor: Queerness, Vampirism, & the Erotic

Dorian Blue — Tue, 01 Feb 2022 14:42:28 -0700

“I felt rather unaccountably towards the beautiful stranger. I did feel, as she said ‘drawn towards her’ but there was also something of repulsion. In this ambiguous feeling, however, the sense of attraction immensely prevailed. She interested and won me; she was so beautiful and so indescribably engaging.”

Twenty-six years before Dracula was published, there was Carmilla. The novella, written by French author Sheridan Le Fanu, chronicles the story of a noblewoman named Laura living in Germany who receives a mysterious yet beautiful countess named Carmilla as her guest. Carmilla is revealed to be a cunning vampire, endowed with the ability to seduce and charm anyone. However, she never pursues men and solely makes women the objects of her desire and affection. During her time at Laura’s castle, Carmilla draws her into her thrall, sneaking into her room in the dead of night to drink her blood, easily a symbol for the erotic. Carmilla may be a monster, but one with an unusual beauty and grace, and as is repeated in Laura’s narration many times, a “languor.” Despite her role as the antagonist, you can’t help but feel an affinity for Carmilla – at least I do. She’s an exceedingly clever femme fatale, fooling everyone around her. In a man’s world, she knows exactly what she wants and how to get it. As said by Adrienne Antrim Major, “It poses a paradigm of feminine power and lesbian love that might well create terror in the hearts of his [Le Fanu’s] contemporaries.”

When I began reading Carmilla, I expected the homoerotic subtley I’ve seen in many other Gothic era books. However, the way that Carmilla speaks to Laura is intensely romantic and erotically charged. There’s no hiding the passion she feels, and it’s what is supposed to make her so evil.

“Dearest, your little heart is wounded; think me not cruel because I obey the irresistible law of my strength and weakness; if your dear heart is wounded, my wild heart bleeds with yours. In the rapture of my enormous humiliation, I live your warm life and you shall die – sweetly die – into mine.”

While there’s a sinister element tinged in Carmilla’s words, the pull of attraction the women feel towards each other, especially in an environment where it’s forbidden, is something that jumps out. Queer love runs deep, often because of the stakes involved in exploring it. Vampires are just as complicated, their outcast nature showcasing people’s fear of the unknown, the other. They are very tied up with queer identity and feelings. Even today, queer people are made to feel like monsters for who they are. Carmilla has no regrets about her actions, which are framed as unforgivable. In a time where pursuing queer feelings was a crime, the only queer figures seen in literature were themselves wrongdoers. For, if it was a positive portrayal, the writing wouldn’t have been published at all. It’s a tragic conundrum – is it better to have negative representation, or none?

Despite its old fashioned outlook and conclusion, Carmilla is a cornerstone of both vampire and queer literature. Not only was Dracula inspired by it, but also more overtly queer vampire books, such as Anne Rice’s Interview With The Vampire. For whatever Carmilla lacked, it still provided a blueprint for everything that followed. It gave us a dynamic and sexy villainess, an infatuated protagonist, and vampire hunters seeking the moral high ground against someone far more beguiling than them.

Scratching the Surface of Medical Racism

Rosie — Tue, 01 Feb 2022 14:42:28 -0700

As discussed in my previous installment of this series on medical inequalities, white men have been the predominant practitioners of allopathic medicine since its foundation. During the rise of modern medicine in the United States, the only people with the power and privilege to enter the medical field were white men. BIPOC were not only absent from the medical industry as practitioners, but also as patients, with white men used as the gold standard patient for any legitimate medical study.

Despite white men being used as the primary demographic during the first legitimate medical studies, this did not stop Civil War era doctors from abusing their slaves for medical experiments, a practice which laid the foundation for centuries of medical abuse against BIPOC. This medical experimentation on black people by white practioners continued far past slavery and segregation, with unethical, vile experiments such as the “Tuskegee Syphilis Study” (active from 1932 to 1972) only furthering the deep (extremely understandable) mistrust that BIPOC have in Western medicine. Not only are people of color underrepresented in the medical field because of elitism in the American medical profession, they are also still severely underrepresented in medical studies (likely in part due to their historically warranted distrust in the medical industry). This creates an unfortunate dilemma because in order for allopathic medicine to address the needs of minorities, they must be represented in medical studies. With the deeply racist roots of the medical system and the systemic underrepresentation of BIPOC as practitioners, BIPOC are only driven further away from participation in such studies and Western medicine as a whole.

While race is not a genetically or biologically real concept, sociocultural perceptions of race have created actual biological disparities for those associated with specific racial categories. Rates of chronic hypertension and cardiovascular disease are significantly higher for black Americans when compared with their white counterparts. This is not due to a genetic predisposition to these diseases but rather chronic exposure to stressors such as racial discrimination. The CDC has classified racism as a public health issue, which is certainly true in a variety of ways. In 2022 black women and/or their infants are still more likely to die during childbirth compared to white mothers, and this disparity has innumerable implications. Not only are black women more likely to experience chronic stress due to racism, causing issues during pregnancy, they are also more likely to experience discrimination and medical malpractice throughout their pregnancy and birth. Black women and BIPOC in general are also far more likely to be exposed to environmental factors that are harmful to their health. The products we consume, the environment around us, the care we receive, all depend on our place within society; and since BIPOC are still largely affected by income inequalities, they are more likely to experience health issues and also more likely not seek out or receive proper care.

Two women, Eddwina Bright and Ashlee Wisdom, who had their own negative experiences with the healthcare system in America, created an app “Health in Her Hue” which aims to pair black women with culturally sensitive healthcare providers. While there are some positive initiatives trying to combat some of the symptoms of medical racism, systemic race issues —especially underrepresentation of BIPOC as practitioners— must be addressed if we ever want our healthcare system to truly benefit us all. Of course, these issues go much deeper than simply hiring more black doctors, especially when medical school in the US costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. Unfortunately, like with practically everything else, the problem lies with capitalism. The systemic issues of the medical system here in the US, and frankly globally, can be almost universally attributed to capitalism being weaponized as an extension of the white heteropatriarchy. I wish there was a simple answer to these types of problems, and while I will continue to uplift initiatives such as the “Health in Her Hue” app, it is important to raise awareness to the systemic issues that cannot be fixed with just one app. The United States’ social fabric is a clusterfuck of systemic issues, we must dedicate a concentrated effort toward increasing awareness about how systems like capitalism, colonialism, and the patriarchy perpetuate the problems that inflict every population demographic.

Student Union, Student Control

J. Ellis — Tue, 01 Feb 2022 14:42:28 -0700

The recent decision to transfer the EMU from the student controlled Incidental Fee (I-Fee) budget to the Student Union fee -managed by the administration- came as a shock to all, except for ASUO President Isaiah Boyd, VP of Student Life Kevin Marbury, and the Board of Trustees. The administration believes that consulting one individual member of the student body sufficiently represents the student perspective in a deal that would impact all students and programs within the EMU. Behind closed doors, Marbury and Boyd made a decision that would effectively alter student autonomy as we know it, without any form of democratic input from the ASUO Executive and Legislative branches, the elected EMU Board, nor students themselves.

Current and former ASUO Senators expressed dismay upon learning the implications of this newly approved budget, citing a lack of information and transparency that rendered them unable to make an informed choice when voting on the budget presented by President Boyd at the January 29th Budget Bonanza Senate meeting. They were told that the decision to switch control of the EMU from students to the administration had already been made days prior, adamantly assured this was the only solution to the inflated budget brought on by Current Service Level (CSL) expenses and the new TOSS (Tiered Organization Student Stipend*) and ASUO stipend models that were approved by Senate in Spring & Fall 2021. Both of these programs are funded by the student I-Fee, leaving little money leftover for other typical expenses associated with EMU programming. The CSL increase was long overdue, guaranteeing better working conditions and benefits for SEIU workers at the university. The new stipend models were intended to account for the rising cost of living and associated inflation for both student clubs for both student club leaders and ASUO leaders. It is worth mentioning, however, that the increase in the stipend budget promised a large payoff for senators in particular- according to a former member of the ASUO Executive Branch, the senators’ stipend allotments were increased from $200 per month to $700 per month. The President is reportedly paid $1520 a month. This is not to say that student representatives should not be justly compensated for their time and work, but it seems the new model was approved with primarily their interests in mind, with little regard towards what this would mean for the rest of ASUO’s budget moving forward.

Boyd and O’Connor sprung their plan on the newly inaugurated Senate at their first meeting in Spring 2021, with full knowledge that cuts would have to be made to accommodate their new ASUO stipend model. At this time, there were many newly elected senators that were not yet trained on the procedures for passing new policies and budgets. Their naiveté was preyed upon by senior members with their own personal, political agendas. This predatory policy implementation, which took advantage of unseasoned representatives, would remain a theme for other budget decisions deliberated in the 2021-2022 school year. According to testimonials from various ASUO affiliates, student representatives were largely left in the dark about the deal being made between Boyd and Marbury. This limited access to information is by design, taking advantage of chaos and pressure, condensed timelines, and hiding behind procedures and complex systems are strategies often used by administrations to guarantee that their preferred policies are passed.

The administration, in conversations with concerned students, have used every trick in the book to attempt to quell our concerns and render us unreasonable. On Tuesday February 15th, student organizers used the TFAB (Tuition & Fee Advisory Board) Public Forum to ask questions about exactly how this decision was made, and the consequences of it. We were joined by two representatives from the Oregon Student Association that traveled from Portland to meet with Boyd, students, and representatives. They also attended the TFAB meeting to investigate the legality of this move. After seizing the microphone, we barraged Marbury, legal counsel Kevin Reed, and President Michael Schill with questions that sought to understand the legal mechanisms that allowed the new budget to be determined without democratic input. To his credit, Marbury did not attempt to deny the clandestine character of the conversations between him and Boyd. He reasserted multiple times in his responses to our questions and comments that the decision only needed to be made between him and the ASUO President; that there are no laws or protocols that mandate decisions about the I-Fee budget must include input from the Senate or any ASUO representatives apart from those on the TFAB committee. For the administration, this legal loophole absolves them from being accused of engaging in undemocratic conduct when unilaterally crafting new budget policies.

On February 17th, the EMU Board held a fact-finding meeting over Zoom to discuss the EMU transfer with Dr. Kevin Marbury. Here, Marbury stood his ground on the stance he took at Tuesday’s TFAB meeting. Board members were given the opportunity to question Marbury about what the new budget would mean for EMU operations and programs, their roles as board members, and student autonomy over our student union. After some pressure from the board about the alarming lack of transparency, Marbury consistently defended the way the decision was made, insisting it was the only way to resolve the budget crisis that’s been on the horizon for years. He put forth a concerted effort to frame the circumstances of the budget transfer as inevitable and common-sense while asserting that the administration was doing ASUO and students a favor by taking this economic burden off I-Fee jurisdiction.

Each board member that spoke expressed distrust that the administration would act in students’ best interests now that they have control of the only student-led space on campus. With the loss of financial control and few bylaws protecting student government from administrative oversight, the board is hesitant that they will retain the same powers previously held when they were in charge of the EMU budget. In rebuttal, Marbury preached about trust. With the shallow earnestness of the best politicians, he acknowledged students’ feelings towards administrative officials, and resignedly said that the best way to build back trust was for administrators, such as himself, to show us through action that their sole objective is to provide a quality education. This answer did not seem to satisfy anyone besides the admin in attendance (Marbury and EMU Director Laurie Woodward). Marbury belittled the board’s objections, saying that as long as they continue working with Laurie then they will always have a say in the EMU budget and programming. However, several EMU Board members have expressed that their input often falls on Woodward’s deaf ears. Marbury’s insistence that ASUO representatives must merely trust the administration is meaningless. Historical precedent shows that admin has continuously steamrolled student autonomy while simultaneously seeking to profit from student fees and tuition increases to the highest legally-allowed limits.

According to Senators, Boyd repeatedly reassured them that he advocated for an element of reversibility to be built into the new policy, otherwise he would not have agreed to the deal. However, in the Board meeting, Marbury entirely contradicted this notion, saying he would not have agreed to the deal if certain programs could opt to return to the I-Fee budget, asserting that such a policy would land us back in the same financial fiasco the new plan is designed to resolve. When asked about the possibility of baking a sunset clause into the new policy, Marbury scoffed, saying the decision had to be made and he has no intention of permitting a possible reversal- certain they made the right decision. Not only did the entire student body have no say prior to the decision being made, the administration is set to ensure we have no power to appeal the policy if our worst fears come to be confirmed in the coming years.

One of the most glaring red flags throughout this ordeal is that the term “gaslighting,” has been thrown around many, many times- from multiple testimonials. Our sources report intimidation, coercion, and manipulation meant to undermine their political power and efficacy. Power differentials seem to be the driving force of the democratic dysfunction that’s been unveiled in recent weeks. At the TFAB forum, Marbury blamed the student body for the lack of transparency surrounding this decision, saying there have been nine TFAB meetings so far this school year that we did not attend to share our concerns, and now it is too late. The Board of Trustees and other administrators fail to recognize that students should not have to take hours out of our invaluable time and busy schedules to attend bureaucratic functions to simply be in the loop on the administration’s latest schemes. The information discussed in these meetings should be easily accessible and transparent to the public, the University’s aloofness on these matters is entirely intentional. In order to participate in what little democracy there is in these processes, students with limited time and other resources are expected to jump over hurdles to gain access to the information that the administration gatekeeps. It is not just students that are kept in the dark, but our elected representatives as well. Senators and Executive branch officials have reported that ASUO President Isaiah Boyd and those in his inner circle use the same manipulative tactics as the suits in charge, blaming Senate for not being informed or speaking up enough to challenge his authority over the I-Fee budget before it was too late. This top-down political pressure incapacitated the Senate from feeling emboldened enough to challenge the budget proposal before it was officially signed by Boyd, Marbury, and the Board of Trustees. Where there is power, there are problems— this political folly demonstrates that our governments do not work for the people, they work for profits under the sole influence of market logic.

In an emergency Senate meeting held on February 18th at 10:30 am, a resolution authored by former Vice President Odalis Aguilar and former Senator Ella Meloy (and also endorsed by several sitting senators and student groups) was presented to ASUO, demanding that the budget allocation be reconsidered. In a stunning victory, the resolution passed with 18 votes in favor while Senator O’Connor abstained. After the resolution passed came time for the most important vote the Senate would make all year— with 17 votes in favor, the motion passed to veto the budget presented by Boyd and draft an entirely new budget that would reallocate the Erb Memorial Union back under ASUO’s purview. This redemption arc in the eleventh hour reinstated some of our confidence in our elected representatives, demonstrating that they can be responsive to student concerns and they too value student autonomy. Now it is up to these representatives to draft a budget by the end of the term that will satisfy both the Board of Trustees and the student body, which is no easy task.

This dizzying political melodrama is a diorama of a larger political narrative where neoiberal business practices systematically dismantle democratic institutions. The dysfunction we have observed within ASUO and the administration reflects the exact same dynamics that influence politics on a national scale. Power in the hands of the few, influenced by corporate stakeholders, are the earmark of neoliberal systems. The University of Oregon has proven time and time again that profits are a higher priority than students or the education they pay for. As an extension of this neoliberal institution, ASUO manages one of the largest budgets of any university in the country; thus it is paramount that we continue to watch for corruption and hold our representatives accountable given the many corporate interests prowling about on our campus. The ASUO makes decisions that impact every single University of Oregon student, whether we all realize it or not.

While the meeting on February 18th marked a small victory, we must focus on the larger fight that lies ahead. We must remember that it is our right as students to have a voice in how the university we pay to attend distributes our tuition dollars and the programs we care about. The events of recent weeks have shown the influence of student power and initiative, and proven to us that even despite the prevalence of disempowering bureaucracy in this decision, there are people that will defend student interests. We demand President Isaiah Boyd and the Board of Trustees to make the choice that aligns with the best interests of student autonomy. We condemn the startling lack of democracy and intimidation by which this decision was greenlit. We advocate for and stand in solidarity with every student, organization, or representative dedicated enough to demand accountability from those that seem to believe they owe us none. Moving forward: you’re either with us, or against us.

*Note: TOSS, Tiered Organization Student Stipend, is for student organization leader stipends: a plan drafted by ASUO president Isaiah Boyd, executive secretary of program administration Luda Isakharov, senate vice-president Ella Meloy and senator Maxwell Ely. The ASUO Leader stipend was designed by Isaiah Boyd and Senate President Claire O’Connor.

Sunrise Rallies Eugene Students

Fern — Tue, 01 Feb 2022 14:42:28 -0700

Over 200 members of the Eugene community gathered at Washburne Park on Friday, February 4th, to participate in a strike for intergenerational climate justice organized by Sunrise Eugene. More than 100 local middle and high school students walked out from their classrooms to join the march that began at South Eugene High School. Chants could be heard from blocks away as the group of young activists approached the park.

The park was set up with tabling and workshops meant to educate the young activists participating. Info tables were overwhelmed by the volume of attendees and did not facilitate the educational conversation organizers were hoping for. The speakers took center stage and ignited the crowd.

Guest speakers included Bailey Grebbin from Sunrise Eugene, South Eugene High School senior Sahara Valentine, Katie O’Mara representing the UO Student Workers Union & UOYDSA, and congressional candidate Doyle Canning. Each speaker made impassioned calls to action, rallying the audience to fight for a better future. “No matter what area of climate justice calls to you, no matter how much time and how many resources you have to offer, you are powerful and your help is essential,” said Valentine.

The speaker section of the rally was derailed after Doyle Canning announced her plan to fight for climate justice in Congress. Canning seized the opportunity to call every member of the audience behind her in an attempt to demonstrate power in numbers. Once students filled out behind her, out came a large Doyle Canning banner. “Photographers, are you getting this?” Canning said. Later it was noticed that a reminder was scrawled on the back of her hand in black sharpie saying, PHOTO. Canning was there as a media stunt and co-opted a legitimate youth movement for her campaign. During conversations, youth expressed doubts about the effectiveness of Congress being able to mitigate the climate crisis, Canning agreed with expressive resignation. Why would youth elect someone who has no clear strategy for instating tangible federal-level solutions to the climate crisis? Unfortunately, Doyle Canning has been endorsed by Sunrise Eugene. An otherwise powerful youth rally was co-opted into a publicity event for a Democrat’s political campaign. This event shows a textbook example of why activists must exercise caution when endorsing politicians. Demonstrations often become destabilized and delegitimized by electoral propaganda hijacking the narrative and movement.

The Trouble in Our Streets

Strawberry Jello — Tue, 01 Feb 2022 14:42:28 -0700

A group gathered in Portland planning to protest police brutality was forced to witness the murder of one of their members on Feburary 19th, 2022. This murder by an armed “homeowner” (as the police report refers to him) was performed by a fascist vigilante who started firing within 90 seconds of approaching the group. Five others were injured. Read more at the Portland Mercury or find first-hand accounts on Twitter. This vigilante murder comes only one hour after Portland Police Bureau murders a community member and releases no details. The police will always protect these murderers, because they are murderers themselves. While the City of Portland faced 90 recorded murders in 2021, the Portland Police reported causing four.

To mourn, process, and continue the fight against fascism, candlelit vigils were hosted in many cities including Eugene. Roughly 65 quiet participants showed up at the Owen Rose Garden. White sheets were hung and illuminated by the candlelight, reading: “EUGENE TO PDX, WE PROTECT US,” with the Three Arrows and anarchist circle. Another sheet reads: “LOVE FROM EUGENE, JFPK (Justice for Patrick Kimmons).” The community is grieving at our own mortality and our loved ones’. The threat of violence becomes ever more present; and the candlelight meant to symbolize hope keeps gusting out. Fascism is alive and well in Eugene— from truck drivers shouting “White Power” at rallies against gender violence toward Indigenous women, to the genocidal sweeps of homeless people. We can only prepare ourselves to face it. It’s time to get serious about self-defense. We all need to be carrying Individual First Aid Kits (IFAK) and learning how to use them. Look into a Stop the Bleed training and know where to buy body armor. After all, it’s the difference between life and death.

Thomas Sankara: The Land of the Upright People

banzai — Tue, 01 Feb 2022 14:42:28 -0700

Art by @audreytyleart

Thomas Sankara was a Pan-Africanist Marxist-Leninist and former president of Burkina Faso, formerly known as Upper Volta. Sankara is oftentimes compared to the Argentine born revolutionary, Che Guevara. Many of his radical actions, ideas, and planning were inspired by Che Guevara. Born in 1949, Thomas Sankara was one of ten children to two Roman Catholic parents. Although his parents wanted him to go down a religious career path, he instead chose to join the military in his late teens. Shortly after he enlisted, he was sent to Madagascar for military-related officer training. During his time in Madagascar, he had witnessed student and farmer uprisings in 1971 and 1972 against the corrupt regime. These uprisings lead to a more radical government in Madagascar, setting the tone for the rest of the continent to also participate in radical politics. In Madagascar, he was introduced to the writings of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, significantly changing the course of his life. In 1976, a group of young officers and Sankara had set up a secret organization within the military; The “Communist Officers’ Group.”

Eventually in 1981, he was given a position of power under the current government, which had just been seized by a group of military officers. The administration in place was considerably disliked, and was followed by yet another coup in 1982. By overthrowing the president, Jean-Baptise Ouedraogo; Sankara became Prime Minister. Sankara advocated for a more progressive push for reform on topics such as education and healthcare. After a short four months as prime minister, Sankara was relieved of his position after he was arrested alongside several Communist Officers’ Group members. A good friend of his, Blaise Compaore, led a coup in retaliation to Sankara and the other men’s arrest. The coup was successful and Thomas Sankara was promptly made President in the summer of 1983, with the support of Libya (who at the time was edging a war with the French) and several other surrounding African countries.

A year into his presidency, Sankara renamed the country Burkina Faso, which holds the powerful meaning of “the land of the upright people.”

As soon as he got into office, Sankara’s focus was to address the problems of homelessness, healthcare, and food. However, one of the biggest issues he faced was vaccinations and immunization. Within the first two years of his presidency, he created programs that allowed over 2 million Burkinabe people to get vaccinated for diseases like polio and measles. Sankara increased infrastructure and housing projects as well, mostly by boosting the productive output of brick factories, enabling thousands of stable houses to be built. Deforestation was also an increasing issue in the region, so Sankara initiated programs that pushed for heavily government supported plant nurseries and mass tree planting programs.

With women’s issues, he aimed for the reconstruction of social interaction; men were encouraged to take on the traditional roles of women, whereas women were encouraged to receive an education and received rights such as the ability to initiate divorce. Thomas Sankara was the first African leader to appoint women into major governmental positions, and active military positions.

A big thing Sankara was trying to prove to the world was that African countries didn’t need the support of western countries through foreign aid, and instead African nations are capable of doing well on their own. His thoughts on foreign aid were very strong; “he who feeds you, controls you.” He was adamantly against receiving any sort of foreign aid. In contrast, Cuba had heavily relied on the USSR for military equipment, food and other materials. Eventually, when the USSR was dismantled, Cuba was ultimately destabilized and lost many of their achievements.

October 15th of 1987, Thomas Sankara was assassinated by an armed group during a coup led by none other than his close friend, Blaise Compaore. Compaore became president (arguably a dictator) following the assassination, and remained the country’s leader until 2014. Immediately after Sankara’s death, Compaore overturned a majority of his policies, and re-joined several organizations such as the World Bank, which Sankara had purposely retracted from.

Just recently in 2016, Mariam Sankara, Thomas Sankara’s widow, called out the French government for his assassination and demanded an investigation. In October of this past year, Burkina Faso opened an investigation to find out who exactly killed him and what their intentions were. Although it’s still unclear as to who was the killer, many believe that western nations (specifically the United States and France) had major influence in the assassination of the Marxist-Leninist pan-Africanist leader.

This past January, there was another military coup, expelling the democratically elected president. On February 16th, American-trained soldier, Lt. Col. Paul-Henri Sandaoga Damiba was sworn in as the nation’s new president. The United States has a long history of training African soldiers who go on to lead military backed coups, and Damiba is a perfect example of just that. The intentional destabilization of socialist countries, or countries with a socialist past, is incredibly obvious. This isn’t an occurrence specific to Africa, as western capitalist nations have encouraged this across the globe, with prime examples also occurring in Latin America.

Although he had a tragic ending, Thomas Sankara led a triumphant government; increasing vaccination rates, improving overall healthcare, bettering conditions for women, increased education rates, and so much more were achieved in a short four years. I think that it’s important to understand and remember that Sankara was a major figure in the advocacy of environmental protection and policy, and in securing basic human rights for the people of Burkina Faso.

Unhoused man dies of exposure sheltering at bus stop

Eric Howanietz — Mon, 10 Jan 2022 17:00:22 -0700

For three days an elderly man sheltered at the intersection of Hwy 99 and Royal Ave. With the first bitter cold snap of the year on Nov 17th, he passed away. The bus stops there four times a day, yet none called for help or rendered aid.

In response, on Friday Nov 19th, Black Thistle Street Aid assembled a vigil for the elderly man whose identity at the time of this printing is unknown.

About 25 people attended the somber event and shared their growing frustration with Eugene’s policies and actions towards the houseless community.

“This follows a pattern we have seen with escalated sweeps,” said one street aid volunteer.

Another commented on how easy it was for people to fall through the cracks when they are dispersed by ongoing sweeps by the police.

Unfortunately, the city’s plan to mass 80 tents in the unheated Tyree Oil warehouse on Garfield Street has stoked paranoia about concentration camp like conditions in the unhoused community. The ill thought scheme is little more than a rubber stamp to move forward with large scale sweeps which will only move unhoused folks further from essential services and community support.

Black Thistle Street Aid (BTSA) runs pop up clinics and does outreach for the unhoused. BTSA says they have lost seven of their patients this year. The unhoused man most likely died of exposure and the vigil hoped to remind the community of the increasingly harsh conditions unhoused folks will be facing this winter. Please take notice and have the courage to help those in need. Housing is a deadly issue in our community and must be addressed as both an immediate emergency and a long-term crisis.

Anti Work, the Great Resignation, and YOU

ch0ccyra1n — Sat, 01 Jan 2022 17:00:22 -0700

Resignation rates in the so-called United States have been increasing far above the usual upper limit of 2.4% from the last 20 years. They have gone up to 3% as of November 2021 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The pandemic has made work even more miserable than it already was before, and people are sick and tired of it. It’s understandable then, why people are quitting their jobs. This phenomenon has become well-known as The Great Resignation, and could potentially be a long-term trend following the end of the pandemic. In other words, the normal we knew before 2020 is not what we will see on the other side.

Due to these recent events, it’s now a great time to talk about anti-work, and bring the necessity of work into question. Bob Black in The Abolition of Work best sums the views which lead many people to despise work thusly, “One person does one productive task all the time on an or-else basis. Even if that task has a quantum [small portion] of intrinsic interest (as increasingly many jobs don’t) the monotony of its obligatory exclusivity drains its [playful] potential.” Play does not necessarily mean playing video games all day, but rather, doing things which are enjoyable. Play means taking your passion, and doing it without worrying about any “work-life balance” or authority to tell you otherwise. It is on your terms, not anyone else’s. Play is what can replace work in our lives, should we seize them back.

If we are to abolish work, we must take serious steps towards it. This means doing things in your life which can reduce your reliance on your boss (if you don’t have one, GOOD!). Think about your needs, and plan for how you might be able to satisfy them without a job. Failing that, find ways to reduce the amount of work in your day. At work, waste time and procrastinate as much as you can. You’re worth more than company time. Most importantly, tell other people about the benefits of abolishing work, as we cannot strive to build a world without it alone.

Book Review: Desert

Red Harris — Sat, 01 Jan 2022 17:00:22 -0700

The world is fucked, and that’s okay.

This is the core thematic message of Desert, a long-form manifesto covering climate collapse and its meaning for the Anarchist movement. Written by an anonymous ecologically inclined anarchist, Desert prefaces itself by almost immediately asking the reader the question, “what if we don’t win?”

It’s a hard prospect to think about, much less seriously engage with, but Desert doesn’t shy away from it. The text makes a convincing point for thinking about it; after all, lots of people come into the movement full of revolutionary ambition and zeal, dead-set on toppling the hegemonic power structures of our world and/or saving the environment from said power structures, only to burn out and give up in disillusionment. But this disillusionment, the author argues, can coexist with the anarchist spirit within all of us that yearns for a wild freedom.

Desert is not an easy read, especially not for an idealist. In literal terms of readability, however, it at times slips into a more academic form. Still, it always maintains its capacity to be understood by the reader. Its core points are made effectively, in ways that are easy to comprehend. It is also extensively researched (it has over two hundred footnotes) and provides strong evidence and quotes to bolster its main arguments.

Those arguments in particular are what make Desert so compelling. It asks the reader to throw away a lot of what they had likely assumed about the world: the metanarrative of progress as a natural state of civilization, the idea of a uniformly applied global future, even the notion of what functional anarchism actually looks like. In doing so, the reader, if paying attention and keeping an open mind, will likely emerge from their reading a completely changed person.

At times Desert shows its age; it was written in 2011, over ten years ago now. Sections talking about populations and demographic growth in relation to agricultural production, while valid points to address, at times come off as unintentionally malthusian. It also is disturbingly prophetic, especially when discussing the rate at which climate change is happening “faster than expected”. In 2011, for those who remember, climate change seemed to most like a far-off challenge that could be easily overcome with recycling initiatives and conservation programs. Now, however, it stares us dead in the face, and given the stranglehold that fossil capitalism has on the world, it’s not getting better anytime soon.

Desert is not all doom-and-gloom, despite what this review might have led you to believe so far. It actually ends with very hopeful messaging; as hegemony chokes on its own consequences, opportunities abound for community resiliency and local ecological stewardship. If you have an evening or two to spare, I strongly recommend reading Desert. Your disillusionment does not have to weigh you down. It can just as easily be freeing.

Book Review: University of Nike

Eric Howanietz — Sat, 01 Jan 2022 17:00:22 -0700

Old News, Same Nike

Joshua Hunt’s University of Nike is not a new story, but a legacy of corruption that shows no sign of changing or even slowing down. It can be difficult to come to grips with the reality that the students of UO are immersed in an active model for the privatization of public universities.

So much of the institution that UO students have invested in is built upon the sweatshop labor of women and children trapped in perpetual poverty. The University of Nike was published in 2018 and lives up to its reviews as a damning indictment of the University of Oregon and the founder of Nike: Phil Knight. Though the initial shock waves it created are now beginning to pass, the ongoing reality of the University of Nike is something that the whole university and the Eugene community are completely besieged by.

The University of Oregon is a checkerboard of outlandish and decadent corporate-controlled construction projects. Each of these brings its influence to bear upon the administrative policy and academic rigor of the institution. None more so than the legacy of rape that Nike’s influence has engendered in UO’s athletics. Hunt’s book shows a national trend towards defunding education that paves the way for privatization. Corporate-sponsored research and sports apparel branding of college athletics then became a major vector for private donations to influence research, policy, and budget priorities at countless American universities.

But what Hunt’s book shows is that UO became a test bed for some of the most convoluted extremes of public/private entanglement. In many ways, the University of Oregon has become an extension of the Nike brand, with over 80 communications and public relations staff managing its corporate-crafted image.

Where this blurred line between corporate branding and academic reputation has had its most violent effect is on the rape culture of UO’s athletics and the documented history of overt and continual administration coverups. With millions on the line, administration and athletic staff are disincentivized from holding athletes to account for rape allegations.

Hunt goes out of his way to name names and a surprising number of staff involved in past cover-ups are still employed by the university. During the 2014 UO Basketball Team gang rape case, the Director of Counseling Shelly Kerr handed over the victim’s therapy notes to UO’s general legal counsel as it prepared for an impending lawsuit. The disclosure of the victim’s therapy notes violated countless medical privacy laws.

Additionally, the UO police department did not publicly acknowledge the assault for over seven weeks. Immediately upon being notified of the allegations against the star basketball players UOPD contacted administration and waited for guidance. The three players accused of the rape Brandon Austin, Damyean Dotson, and Dominic Artis were allowed to continue to play through that year’s NCAA tournament even while administration was aware of the accusations. UO was more concerned with its media strategy surrounding the controversy than any justice for the victim.

Another figure Hunt notes, Lisa Thornton, is still in the public records office and regularly takes her orders from UO’s Public Relations department. This has made any release of documents through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) a constant struggle for journalists and academics (as the Insurgent can attest).

One whistle blower even said, “Lisa was particularly afraid that the public-relations department would get mad at her… They have a lot of clout at the university.”

In the end the capricious and avarice character of Phil Knight has been completely exposed by Hunt. It’s even clear that Knight had former UO president David Frohnmayer held hostage and acted on threats to pull millions in donations from Fanconi Anemia research, a genetic disease of which three of Frohnmayer’s daughters died. Such shocking acts by Knight directly pressured Frohnmayer into pulling out of the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC).

UO campus activists were at the center of a huge international movement in the early 2000’s to hold corporations accountable for sweatshop conditions. UO’s membership in the WRC was a keystone of that movement on American campuses. The pressure Knight’s various donations brought to bear on UO ultimately broke the back of the anti-sweatshop movement at universities.

Because of Phil Knight and Nike’s legacy, the University of Oregon is built on the back of sweatshop labor.

If Hunt’s critique is lacking, it is that it failed to illustrate how Nike opened the door for Neo-liberal raiding from a rogue’s gallery of corporations each with their own interests and agendas. He does fail to give context to how UO’s Board of Trustees was turned into an all-you-can-eat buffet of corporate interests where donors now directly assert control over the university. This used to be taboo, the power and the money were supposed to at least appear separate.

Big donors traditionally congregated in university foundations, and the governing of the university was conducted by a Board of Trustees whose priority was the public interest of students, staff, and faculty. Much of the back-room dealings, that led to the Oregon university system restructuring under Oregon Senate Bill 270, are not touched on by Hunt.

But I really can’t blame him for focusing on UO’s biggest and most controversial donor.

At the University of Oregon, the line between the foundation and the Board of Trustees has become so incestuous it’s hard to tell the difference. The impact of these funding and policy priorities is felt by students and negatively affects the learning and social environment of UO. University privatization has led to violent gentrification of the Eugene community and threatens the academic integrity of its departments. Most of all, it has prevented the anti-sweatshop & anti-globalization movement from gaining ground on American campuses for the last 20 years.

Get the book from the UO library or at the ROAR office in the EMU

Bureaucracy is More Than a Bitch, It's a Killer

LEGO Inc. — Sat, 01 Jan 2022 17:00:22 -0700

On the winter solstice of 2021, while many families were warm at home, a quiet group of anarchists made a showing at a candlelight vigil.

The event was hosted by the Eugene Human Rights Commission, to memorialize every homeless person who died in Eugene this year.

The Eugene Human Rights Commission seems to be a City of Eugene “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion”-type team (DEI). This city department is designed to put on solidarity marches, present awards, and gosh darn it, make everyone feel good! Not on the longest and darkest night of the year though, when over 40 deaths were announced: named and unnamed community members. The real number of deaths is unknown.

Among the community partnerships listed was the City of Eugene Police Department, various churches and charity organizations, and the star of the night: Egan Warming Center.

Unfortunately, Egan is an emergency shelter that only operates on freezing nights when unsheltered people would surely die from exposure. Surprisingly, none of the mutual aid groups like Black Thistle Street Aid or Stop the Sweeps were listed, even though Black Thistle Street Aid can boast an impact of over 6,000 people helped since their founding in July 2020— with a budget that seems to come entirely from informal donations or volunteers’ pockets.

Given the recent protests surrounding the City of Eugene’s forcible removal of homeless people from their encampments, I audibly laughed when the police department was commended for their efforts in this humanitarian crisis.

Surely the Eugene Human Rights Commission knows that the City of Eugene orders these removals? That many of these deaths were at the hands of police officers who stole and trashed community members’ belongings and left them exposed to the cold?

The City of Eugene has a love-hate relationship with their homeless citizens, and by love-hate I mean that they love taking credit for the work of community groups, student design teams, and equity committees that pretend they are providing real housing. The hate part of the relationship is aimed at homeless people themselves, with the City of Eugene’s hostile architecture, heavy enforcement of loitering laws, and genocidal sweeps. But homeless people don’t bring in tuition, football, or Nike dollars.

So the homelessness response is centered on optics and a complete lack of compassion. After all, we don’t want any of those students from California to feel unsafe here, do we?

As someone who has both experienced homelessness and worked in homeless services at the county level here in Oregon, I know the process of drafting strategic plans, setting goals, and creating cute infographics inviting “stakeholders” to “listening sessions” is a complete and utter delusion few are comfortable acknowledging. No money will come to fund the tiny home villages and congregate shelters.If they’re lucky, overworked bureaucrats and social workers will get a Cost of Living Increase.

Building transitional housing without heat or electricity: that’s not stupidity, that’s negligence. We have become a morally corrupt society when a budget report matters more than the basic human needs of the person living next to us. With Eugene having the largest per capita number of homeless people in the United States, and growing, it makes one wonder why we pay taxes at all if government can’t and won’t protect us.

Don't Look Up Review

David Patrick Schranck Jr. — Sat, 01 Jan 2022 17:00:22 -0700

On Christmas Eve 2021, Netflix released the latest film from comedic writer-director Adam McKay, Don’t Look Up. The film, written and directed by McKay with David Sirota (a former Bernie Sanders advisor) receiving a story credit, follows two Michigan State University astronomers, Dr. Randall Mindy (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) and PhD student Kate Diabiasky (played by Jennifer Lawrence), who discover a comet that will impact the Earth in six months and is large enough to cause a mass-extinction event. They set out to convince apathetic politicians and media to take it seriously in order to save the planet. The plot is a satirical allegory about the climate crisis and resistance from those in power to take it seriously despite its dire threat. This picture features a stacked, all-star cast including the aforementioned DiCaprio and Lawrence along with Cate Blanchett, Meryl Streep, Jonah Hill, Timothée Chalamet, Tyler Perry, Ron Perlman, Mark Rylance, Rob Morgan, Ariana Grande, and Kid Cudi (credited with his birth name Scott Mescudi) among others.

McKay’s newest film follows in his trend over the last few years of directing Oscar-bait, political comedies. The first picture in this series of sorts was 2015’s The Big Short, which was based on a non-fiction book of the same name by Michael Lewis about the 2007/2008 financial crisis and won him the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. He followed this with 2018’s Vice, starring Christian Bale as Dick Cheney, which also received multiple Oscar nominations. This direction for his career is a slight departure from his roots, coming to fame as the co-writer and director of some of Will Ferrell’s most iconic comedies, such as the Anchorman films, Talladega Nights, and Step Brothers. These movies, while beloved by audiences, were not critical and awards darlings like his more recent releases have been. From the perspective of this humble critic, it seems that after basking in the light of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ honor and glory, McKay has had a bit of an Icarus moment with Don’t Look Up.

The film falls flat primarily on the basis of its screenplay. Despite being a comedy, the vast majority of the jokes in the movie didn’t evoke any laughter or amusement from me. The humor is usually dull, uninspired, and derivative. Additionally, I take much issue with the political commentary that the film seeks to advance. I don’t disagree with the film’s basic assessment that Washington, business, tech, and media power players are corrupt, apathetic to catacylsmic crises, incompetent, and generally selfish. These specific critiques are commonly acknowledged to be true and seem pretty obvious. But, the movie smugly beats the audience over the head with these same few points continually over the course of its unnecessary and protracted 2 hour and 18 minutes length. It seems that McKay and Sirota thought their very trite takes were somehow revelatory and vital, warranting the endless and annoying repetition. Meryl Streep’s President Janie Orlean, an amalgamation of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, along with her son and Chief of Staff Jason Orlean (portrayed by Jonah Hill) seemed like they should have been two of the funniest characters of the movie. But despite the best efforts of Streep and Hill, McKay fails to make them compelling or sufficiently humorous. They seemed to be reminiscent of the vapid resistance liberal parodies of Trump World from the likes of SNL and the Trevor Noah-era Daily Show during the Trump presidency. Moreover, the type of satirical humor that the screenplay seeks to utilize was previously done much more deftly and cleverly by TV series like Veep and Silicon Valley and films like Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove.

I also found the message the plot sends about the climate crisis to be offbase, overly simplistic, too fatalistic, and toothless. The film basically argues that despite the American government’s fundamental inability to effectively govern and adequately respond to crises, that because they are the only “legitimate” power in the world and that we, the average person in the audience, have no recourse to stop disaster from occurring. The only reference made in the film to quite literally anyone else in the world even attempting to seriously address the comet is a last-ditch social media campaign that leads nowhere led by DiCaprio and Lawrence’s characters after all their other efforts fail and a passing joke about China, Russia, and India working together to attempt to deflect the comet but ultimately failing miserably. In the movie’s final act, the United States and a tech conglomerate called BASH, ran by a billionaire and political donor named Peter Isherwell (an eccentric character who seems like a mix between Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerburg played by Mark Rylance), unsuccessfully attempts to cause the comet to explode in a way in which the rare-earth minerals that it contains can be recovered and exploited for profit. This failure inevitably causes the death of almost the whole of humanity while the elite escape on a spaceship that sends them deep into space to an Earth- like planet. This narrative shows no examples of average people coming together and attempting to meaningfully address the crisis themselves and no revolutionaries attempting to overthrow the people in power who seek to carry out a plan to address the comet that will inevitably end in complete disaster. This specific point strikes me as rather unrealistic and doomerist to me, but also is tellingly a reflection of the creators’ banal radlib politics. Additionally, the movie doesn’t sufficiently point out capitalism’s central role in undermining action on climate change. Mark Rylance’s Peter Isherwell character is the stand-in for corporate power in the film, but he is framed more as an individual example of CEOs’ arrogance and greed as opposed to being more representative of the rot of capitalism as a whole. The implication seems to be that capitalism just needs to be more regulated and that wealthy donor money needs to be kept out of politics as opposed to coming to the conclusion that capitalism is inherently detrimental and must be overthrown. I must also take issue with the film’s portrayal of social media. The movie presents social media as being too reactionary and celebrity obsessed to actually meaningfully reflect on and respond to the crisis. McKay’s assessment seems to have a degree of truth to it, but it’s still far too superficial and lacking in nuance. The screenplay was incredibly frustrating and dissatisfying to me to say the least.

When it comes to the other aspects of the film, in most respects, it’s either just passable or unremarkable. The performances from the ensemble aren’t particularly noteworthy despite certainly having no lack of talent among them. The editing can be choppy and odd at times, including some continuity errors that are quite apparent. Composer Nicholas Britell delivers a catchy and enjoyable score that suits the film well, but his work is pretty consistently excellent so this is to be expected. The effects are also of better quality than I would’ve expected for a Netflix film. There’s even a song by Ariana Grande and Kid Cudi called “Just Look Up” that seems to be a glaringly evident vehicle for a Best Original Song nomination at the Oscars and a thinly veiled justification for the inclusion of the two musicians in the cast.

Despite being written and directed by an Academy Award winner who claims to be a democratic socialist and has appeared on Chapo Trap House and having an advisor to the most successful socialist politician in American history being credited as having contributed to the story, the politics of the film are painfully liberal and stale. Both McKay and Sirota have attempted to portray critics of the film as simply being disgruntled people who don’t care about climate change. This is utterly ridiculous and asinine. They made a shitty movie that failed to achieve its most basic goals and they can’t accept that. Despite all of this, the film has been having a successful awards season so far, getting nominations from the Golden Globes, the SAG Awards, and the National Board of Review and being seen as a likely Best Picture nominee at the Oscars. This awards recognition for the film showcases once again how elite Hollywood liberals will eat up anything with the veneer of high-minded, forward thinking politics even though the films they choose to herald as “message” films tend to still perpetuate false, damaging, shallow, and/or backwards ideas. Suffice to say, I do not recommend this film. If you want to watch a film about the climate crisis that’s truly captivating and intelligent, watch Paul Schrader’s First Reformed from 2017 instead. I give Don’t Look Up a rating of two out of five stars.

Eugenics Economics

Aisling — Sat, 01 Jan 2022 17:00:22 -0700

At the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic and its subsequent variants and surges, one thing that many people said was “it’s okay, this only kills those who are already vulnerable. It’s not That bad and we can’t let the economy die because of the threat to Them.”

This, on its own, is a horrible and ableist thread of thought that inevitably leads to eugenics, but when followed by the worryingly prevalent and easily spread but false eco-fascist ideas that humans are a “disease” to the Earth, that overpopulation is actually occurring, and Covid is a solution, it paints a picture that not only are disabled people expendable but that it would be the right thing to leave them to die so that the world—or rather, the able bodied people of the world—can live on without any disruptions to their lives.

Eventually, the true danger to the wider population was recognized by most and steps, however late or ineffectual they were, were taken to mitigate the damage from this disease but the underlying thread that the economy is worth more than human lives has remained a constant throughout the past two years.

One death is too many and, as of the writing of this article, we are at almost 840k deaths and millions of lives irreparably changed by this disease—on top of the millions of lives financially destroyed—in the US alone.

Flip-flopping on Covid policy at the federal, state, and local level led to the lengthening of this tragedy, further deaths and infections, further division of the people, and made what could have been a quick, if devastating, epidemic endemic for years or decades to come. And it was all in the name of preserving the economy, or as every business who could get their hands on ad space called it “getting back to normal.”

This idea that the economy must never dip at all ever is not only wrong but down right immoral; it kills people and destroys lives in “normal” times and absolutely devastates them during mass tragedies like the one we are living through now.

We as a society have to stop pretending that we a) can get through this pandemic—or any widespread disaster—with an undamaged economy and b) that it is worth it to do so.

This is impossible to expect and leads to people pushing for shops to open up, putting workers at risk of either getting sick or losing their jobs. And as people continue to say we’re in “post Covid times” this is just going to get worse.

Recently, the CDC published a study looking at underlying conditions, or co-morbidities, that they claim either made someone more likely to die/led to or contributed to their deaths by Covid. This list includes what you might expect such as heart and lung conditions or being immunocompromised but it also includes conditions like depression, ADHD, visual impairments including color blindness, acne, pretty much any kind of physical injury, and even hiccups. The list is extensive and yes, if color blindness Was a symptom of Covid, it would be a bit concerning. But these are pre-existing conditions, meaning people had them before and on top of catching Covid and I can't see how falling out of a tree makes you more likely to die of Covid.

This is information that is being used to justify eugenics pushes right now. After the list was released, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, went on national television and said:

“75% of deaths have at least four comorbidities…really encouraging news.”

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, CDC director

What she said—and what the Biden administration is saying—is horrible on it’s own but what she means is worse; by saying that only those with underlying conditions will die, they might as well be once again saying that it is okay for disabled and sick people to die to save the economy.

But what they really mean by “comorbidities” is “things most of the population of the US has.”

Reading through the list, it's hard to imagine anyone without at least one of these conditions, but the number that have at least four is just as frighteningly high; looking at the list, I lost count at 24 underlying conditions that I, myself, have.

This list of practically useless information is being used to back these questionable claims and it comes not long after the CDC cut the quarantine time in half and recommended not testing asymptomatic people, which will only lead to more people getting sick. Saying that it’s okay to “get back to normal” because only those who aren’t “healthy” will die, allows them to stop putting up protections for those most affected by the pandemic and reduce the number of people eligible for unemployment, food stamps, and/or rent deferments/halts; leaving tens of millions to make the decision to either risk getting Covid and/or bring it home to their household or else lose the ability to buy food or housing— an impossible choice that does nothing to end this pandemic. This will only lead to the continual devastation of the most vulnerable of us before this ends and leave potentially tens of millions of people to deal with the aftermath of having Covid.

Disabled people have been saying Covid was a serious concern from the start, when most of the country was relieved that it would presumably only severely affect us. Since the beginning, we have been continually asked to sacrifice our lives for the comfort of others, before it became clear that it affected the wider population and suddenly it became a concern.

Now, at what far too many are falsely saying is the end, we are once more being told to die so that the country—or rather, the economy— can get back on track. We have always been the first to bear the brunt of tragedy, but now the CDC is throwing everyone under the bus for some numbers on a screen.

By opening the country just as a new variant of Covid shows itself while reducing the tools we have to keep ourselves and everyone around us safe, we are being asked to exchange lives for money most of us will never see and a “normal” that already disadvantaged so many and may be impossible to return to.

Most of the lives spent on the economy will be those most vulnerable in our society—the disabled, the elderly, the poor, the homeless, people of color, and lgbtq+ people—and if that isn’t blatant eugenics, I don’t know what is.

GTFF Demands Safer Working & Learning Conditions Through Protest: and SUCCEEDS

Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation — Sat, 01 Jan 2022 17:00:22 -0700

Photography by Fern

We, the Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation, make the following demands of the University of Oregon to maintain the health and safety of workers and students on campus:

Increase Remote Instruction Options

• Move all courses remote, when applicable, until cases in Lane County decrease to low transmission levels as determined by the CDC (50 cases per 100,000 people); • Expand options for remote classes during Spring term to allow students and instructors who feel unsafe to have remote learning and teaching options; • Eliminate requirement for instruction to be delivered in multiple, synchronous modalities (i.e., in-person and via live broadcast via Zoom); • Eliminate requirement to record in-person instruction to allow instructors the choice to plan asynchronous methods that work best for their courses.

Improve In-Person Protections

• Maintain a paid, 10-day quarantine and isolation period for those who test positive, in line with current scientific evidence; • Allow GEs to elect into remote work as needed for underlying health risks for COVID-19; • Provide hazard pay at 1.5x the normal rate of pay for those required to work in-person, especially in the case that work takes place in shared spaces; • Require the use of and provide all UO employees and students with N95 or KN95 masks on campus; • Increase on-campus testing capacity and require weekly testing for in-person/on-campus employees and students, regardless of vaccination status; • Implement a booster clinic or otherwise provide COVID vaccine boosters on-campus; • Provide clear, actionable instructions and standardized guidelines to all supervisors and principal investigators (PIs) to encourage students and employees to not come to campus if sick/exposed and refrain from any form of pressure (direct or indirect) to do otherwise; • Direct all unit heads to encourage GEs/students to report violations of standardized guidelines; • Re-assign any courses that remain in-person to empty university classrooms and lecture halls to maximize social distancing.

Provide Transparent Public Data

• Implement notification processes that informs all close contacts and affected employees within 24 hours of exposure, as required by OSHA; • Publish daily all active cases reported on campus (including tests done off-campus) in a manner that is clear and accessible, with complete data within 24 hours each weekday; • Provide clear thresholds for when policy changes affecting instruction and/or GE working conditions will be modified or introduced.

Engage Workers and Students in Decision Making

• Enter negotiations with the sole representative of GEs (i.e. the GTFF) when changes to their working conditions outside of the GTFF CBA are proposed, as required by the CBA and by the Employee Labor Board.

• Form a labor and management working-group that provides staff, faculty, GEs, and students with decision- making power on university operations that impact the entire campus community, such as how and when we return to a greater in-person campus community.

How UO’s COVID Response Underscores the Necessity of Democratzing the Board of Trustees

Democratize UO — Sat, 01 Jan 2022 17:00:22 -0700

Democratize UO’s Statement on the UO Administration’s Response to the Omicron Surge

The roots of the current governance structure at UO can be traced back to 2010 under then-new University President Robert Lariviere. At this time, all of the public universities in the state were governed by the Oregon University System. President Lariviere advocated for UO to have an independent board¹. Around this time, top UO donor and the former CEO and founder of Nike, Phil Knight, stated in an interview that Larivere’s proposals for an independent board represented UO “tak[ing] a step towards becoming a more private university”². In 2012, Columbia Sportswear CEO Tim Boyle helped form a PAC called “Oregonians for Higher Education” that raised hundreds of thousands of dollars from Knight and other wealthy contributors with the goal of creating an autonomous board for UO³⁴. In 2013, after the PAC lobbied the Oregon Legislature, Gov. John Kitzhaber signed Senate Bill 270 into law, creating a means for establishing autonomous Boards of Trustees at Oregon’s public universities⁵.

The new legislation outlined that the new Board of Trustees at UO would be made up of members appointed by the governor and approved by the legislature, with tokenized representation of one student, one faculty member, and one staff member outside of the at-large membership. In practice, the president of the university and the board make their recommendations for each new member to the governor which are then rubber-stamped with little attention or fanfare.

This whole undemocratic and unaccountable process has enabled the Board of Trustees and the President of UO to get away with many unpopular decisions. In this era of crisis, the consequences of that dynamic have become more alarming than ever before. Without a clear means of being able to hold the BOT or President Schill’s feet to the fire, they are emboldened to prioritize UO’s bottomline over public health and safety.

From the very beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, UO has emphasized the maximization of their profits over doing what is necessary to protect students, faculty, staff, and the wider Eugene community. At the end of Winter Term 2020, the Board of Trustees met indoors and maskless in order to approve a new “Guaranteed Tuition” model, designed to conceal perpetual yearly tuition increases by having each graduating class pay its own set rate for tuition, and the purchase of a $12 million jumbotron for Autzen Stadium⁶. At this same meeting, Board Chairman Chuck Lillis shoved one of our student activists who was blocking an entrance in protest⁷. In Fall 2020, the university dragged its feet on announcing that classes would continue to be remote until August when most students had already signed leases to live in Eugene for the year. At the same time, UO locked incoming freshmen into housing contracts, denying them refunds if they opted to later move out mid-way through the year if conditions worsened.

Throughout the 2020/2021 school year, the @covid.campus Instagram page diligently compiled anonymous testimony from the campus community about how they felt unsafe and documented UO’s woefully inadequate response to this crisis⁸. There were stories of RA’s being harassed for doing their jobs, dining hall workers being overworked, and institutional indifference towards Greek life’s irresponsible partying. This vital source of information exposed the administration’s fundamental incompetence in their handling of COVID.

In the 2021/2022 school year, we have seen the same patterns of behavior from UO admin persist. The university has fully committed to in-person classes with required vaccinations starting this fall. But, now they face a shortage of student workers due to low wages and a new variant that may very well undermine the return to “normalcy” that they’re desperately clinging to. As we enter the new year and a new term, it is due time for UO to reassess its current strategy.

Even before the discovery of the Omicron variant, there were shortcomings in the university’s reopening strategy. There were no efforts to reduce class sizes, proper ventilation was not prioritized, professors were allowed to give lectures maskless, there was no requirement for all classes to have a remote option, prior flexibility in changing grading options was rescinded, and on-campus mental health services and the Accessible Education Center (AEC) have become overwhelmed due to increased demand. Now, as we begin a new term with the worst surge we’ve seen so far, UO is again dragging its feet and abdicating responsibility. The university has not been offering free N95/KN95 masks, classes must reach the arbitrary threshold of 20% of students being absent due to COVID before switching to remote, and there seem to be no plans to offer vaccination clinics for boosters. UO’s current approach is incredibly reckless and unnecessarily puts the whole campus community in danger.

The Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation (GTFF) has been bravely raising the alarm about the unsafe conditions that their members, and the community as a whole, face. Since the first week of Winter Term began, they have been publicly calling on UO to temporarily make classes remote and to offer free, proper PPE. Additionally, the union has called on its members to file Unfair Labor Practice charges against the university and to refuse to work in an unsafe environment. Democratize UO stands in solidarity with the GTFF and fully supports their demands.

How has UO responded to the GTFF? By sending out a vague, toothless email from a Provost and seeking out union-busting legal counsel. This response shows how arrogant and stubborn the university’s administration is. When faced with pushback from one of the few mechanisms the campus community has to stand up to them, the administration gets defensive instead of meeting the moment.

The University of Oregon’s administration has shown time and time again that they are not fit to lead. Now, their failures have the potential for extremely dire consequences on-campus and in the city of Eugene as a whole. More than ever, it is clear that the Board of Trustees as it exists now cannot properly respond to crises. They are far more concerned about maintaining profits than ensuring the health and safety of students, faculty, staff, and community members. The board will never change its selfish and destructive ways without being forced to.

We desperately need a democratically elected Board of Trustees. Everyone at UO deserves to elect representatives to the board from their own communities of students and workers. Having an equal number of students, faculty, staff, and community members on the Board of Trustees who govern our university instead of corporate millionaires and billionaires will lead us towards true progress on campus. By electing the trustees, we would be able to hold them accountable and put pressure on them to meet our needs. This is what our university deserves.

DEMOCRATIZE UO DEMANDS:

A Temporary Return to Remote Instruction for At Least Two Weeks
Require N95/KN95 Masks for All Students, Faculty, and Staff and Provide Them for Free
Offer Booster Vaccination Clinics for the UO Community
Raise the Pay of Student Workers to a Living Wage
Return to the Flexible Grading Option Policies
Increase Funding for the UO Counseling Center and Accessible Education Center
Democratize the Board of Trustees

Notes

I Never Want to Feel Uncomfortable in my Class, Ever Again

banzai — Sat, 01 Jan 2022 17:00:22 -0700

Last term I had a political science class with a brilliant, yet racially insensitive professor. She’s a scholar who is very well versed in her field and extremely passionate about what she was teaching.

But, during lectures, she would insert her own political commentary. When doing so, she would target one specific South Asian country, which already has a poor, inaccurate and warped image in the West.

This is the same country my parents immigrated to 22 years ago. I was one of the only South Asian people in that class of over 100 students, so it felt very personal and almost as if she was calling me out specifically. I never want to feel uncomfortable in my class, ever again.

She would tell us factually incorrect information, making the nation seem as if they had a government infested with corrupted Islamic extremists and a population of Al-Qaeda fanatics.

At one point, she went as far as to say that a prominent figure had gone out of his way to sell weapons of mass destruction to Arab nations for his own financial gain. This is easily refuted, just after a 5-second google search.

My class was overwhelmingly male and white, as the rest of political science is. The same demographic that happens to hold the most economic, political, and social power.

On top of that, we’re students. When a professor tells us something, chances are that we’re probably going to believe them. Professors are people of authority and people with academic dominance over their students in most situations. They have a lot of influence over their students, as we’re extremely impressionable.

Spreading false information, similar to what my professor did, can be so dangerous. So many students probably took that information and just went with it, not questioning a thing she said. Spreading harmful, racist, and bigoted opinions to your students (who are predominantly white and male) is completely irresponsible.

It’s okay to express your opinions about the material one is teaching, but professors should also specify how it’s their own opinion so they can let students develop their own conclusions.

Professors— even the ones who say they take a stand against racism and claim to be anti-imperialists— are in positions of power and can be easily corrupted.

Knowing that they have such a powerful impact on their students’ learning, some may take advantage of that. I’m not saying that this particular professor was doing this, but it is definitely a possibility in other classrooms.

The University of Oregon, and other higher educational institutes, should put the power into the students’ hands. We pay for a quality education, so we should be getting exactly that. Students should be able to directly talk to our professors about their course material and we should give anonymous (or not) feedback to the professor throughout the course. But, to be able to get honest and true opinions from the student body, we mustn’t ever feel as if our grades would suffer in the process— (petty and immature adults exist!)

We should also be able to discuss with our professor on how culturally appropriate and racially sensitive their content is; this is especially prevalent in political science, global studies, history, and other similar studies.

Podcast Review: Behind the Bastards

Red Harris — Sat, 01 Jan 2022 17:00:22 -0700

It’s true, a lot of us love true crime. We love the mystery, we love the stakes, and perhaps most of all, we are utterly captivated by the depths of depravity people seem capable of. You may be one of those people that can’t get enough analysis of some really nasty folks. You may also have run out of satisfying podcasts in that subject area. You may simply be interested in hearing about horrible people. May I invite you to try: Behind the Bastards.

Behind the Bastards covers all sorts of monstrous people and organizations. Everything from tyrannical dictators, to corrupt CEOs, to fanatical cultists and grifters of the highest order are featured as topics on the show.It gives the listener keen insights and details they might not have heard about the histories and lives of the profoundly immoral. There are episodes you would absolutely expect (Hitler), and ones you might be surprised by (Dr. Phil), but nearly every episode finds a way to be entertaining and informative.

The host of Behind the Bastards is a jack of all trades; a former editor for the website Cracked, an investigative journalist, a battlefield reporter, a novelist, and perhaps most importantly, a machete enthusiast, Robert Evans is many things, but the one thing he isn’t is boring. His vast well of worldly experience has given him keen insights into just about any topic you can imagine, and his banter with his producer, co-hosts, and guests can make even the darkest moments of history engaging. Content warnings are given when necessary.

You might know Robert from his other work, like the widely-listened to 2019 podcast covering the possibility of a Second American Civil War It Could Happen Here, or his nonfiction book A Brief History of Vice. Between Robert’s reserved but effective producer Sophie, his upbeat Zoomer co-host Garrison, and his occasional (but still no less charming) other co-host Christopher, it’s clear that the team at Behind the Bastards cares about their work. The show is meticulously well-researched, with cited source material always named. The selection of guests also helps liven up the atmosphere and keep things fun, with people from all backgrounds making appearances, and they more often than not have excellent chemistry with the hosts.

Not all episodes tackle the topics of specific people, of course; some discuss specific trends, others talk about broad movements, and occasionally the team will just ruthlessly critique the god-awful fiction writing of Ben Shapiro and Steven Seagal. Holiday episodes also flip the script and cover the life of a pretty decent non-bastard.

The podcast releases new episodes every Tuesdays and Thursdays, and despite running since 2018, it shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon. And even if you find that the episodes of the week aren’t covering a topic you find interesting, you can be rest assured that next week, more likely than not, they will be.

Behind the Bastards can be found on IHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, RSS, and probably a whole bunch of other places.

Public Records Request Reveals Campus Collusion with the CIA

Solidarity News — Sat, 01 Jan 2022 17:00:22 -0700

In November of last year, CIA recruiters made a visit to the University of Oregon campus. In our December issue we wrote about their visit and the counterprotest that was organized against it. We had one lingering question: “who arranged for the CIA to recruit on campus, and why?”

Since then, we have obtained public records that shine light on how the visit was arranged and the response that the University of Oregon had to protestors. It paints a picture of a close relationship between the University Career Center and the CIA over conversations that spanned many months. Steve K., West Coast regional coordinator for the CIA, reached out to Tina Haynes, Employer Engagement Coordinator at the Career Center back on July 8, 2021. Haynes says she would have reached out to Steve if she had not heard from him. She has been organizing campus visits from at least 2017, the UO events calendar shows.

Once his visit had been scheduled, Haynes shared the details with who she thought was relevant faculty and staff on November 1, eight days before his visit. This sparked the interest of Professor Leslie McLees, a Senior Instructor, Undergraduate Coordinator, and advisor for the Geography Department.

McLees says she helped organize a recruitment session while Steve was on campus last fall. Some attendees of the counterprotest—which was not tied to any public group— were wary that some of the passerby appeared to be UO employees who were spying on them, a valid concern given the strength of the surveillance on campus and society at large.

The emails show that the university was alerted to the protest and had been tracking it beforehand. Kevin Marbury, VP of Student Life, says he had been made aware of the event, and shared a screenshot of Cops Off Campus UO boosting the flyer for the event on their Instagram story to Career Center Director Paul Timmins.

That message made its way to Haynes and she forwarded it to Steve, “Hi Steve—I know you’re due to arrive soon but wanted to give you a heads about [sic] a potential ‘Teach In’ being organized around the agency visit. We’re making folks aware of it and will be keeping an eye on things if they progress.”

The Career Center says that the CIA has shown interest in making another visit to campus in the spring. Any details of an on-campus visit will be posted on Handshake.

Seguimos en resistencia: Colombia’s Indigenous Environmentalists

Rowan F. F. Glass — Sat, 01 Jan 2022 17:00:22 -0700

Photography from CNN

If you identify as an anti-capitalist, you likely possess some basic knowledge of the struggles that North American Indigenous peoples have long waged against colonial and neoliberal threats of capitalist development of Indigenous land.

One recent example is the Dakota Access Pipeline protests at Standing Rock in 2016-17. Hundreds were injured during those protests, which rank among the largest and most publicized Indigenous land struggles in recent American history. That is clearly an unacceptable toll (a single injury would be) for activists to suffer for their protection of Indigenous land and the health of its occupants and the environment, both immediate and global.

Nevertheless, a far deadlier struggle is every day being waged further south in defense of Indigenous rights and environmental justice—one that often goes unnoticed by even the most committed activists in the global north.

Colombia’s Indigenous climate warriors work one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. To understand why, we must turn to history.

For the past 50 years, Colombia has been wracked by an internal conflict that has left hundreds of thousands dead and millions displaced, a conflict in which a complex mosaic of guerrilla groups, drug cartels, and rightwing paramilitary organizations—some with connections to officials in the Colombian government and military, others quietly funded and supplied by the CIA—have battled each other and the government in an asymmetric struggle for control of land and resources. This conflict has been carried out by a veritable alphabet soup of armed groups with acronyms like FARC, ELN, AUC, EPL, ACCU, and many more. While each armed group had or has (some are now defunct, while others continue the fight) a different vision of Colombia’s future, none were able to resist the draw of the lucrative cocaine trade, which took off in the 1980s in response to growing North American demand. Much of the Colombian conflict, therefore, has centered around control of the nation’s most productive coca-growing lands (1).

For decades, Colombia has been the world’s leading cocaine exporter, and the country’s recent history of violence can be largely explained by the economic importance of this trade. Declining guerrilla activity and the demobilization of most militants with the signing of landmark peace accords in 2016 have only caused other criminal groups to fill the void they left; cocaine production has been on a steady increase since hitting a low in 2012.

The conflict and drug trade have disproportionately affected Indigenous Colombians as victims of violence—personal, ecological, economic, and political—at the hands of both armed groups and the Colombian government.

Indigenous farmers living on productive coca land are especially vulnerable, as tens of thousands across the country have been forced at gunpoint by guerrillas and paramilitaries alike to uproot their crops and plant row after row of coca. This is when they’re not simply forced to hand over their land and leave—an outcome which has displaced millions throughout the length of the conflict—or shot on the spot if suspected of collaboration with the enemies of whichever armed group is in town.

While coca can fetch market prices far higher than other crops, the vast majority of profits from the drug trade never reach the hands of farmers. Consider, too, the impossible situation that farmers find themselves in no matter who controls their territory.

While the narcos remain, farmers are forced by economic imperative or threat of violence to grow coca. If the narcos leave and the government enters, guns blazing and without regard for collateral damage to civilian lives and property, the peasants’ fields are burned and they are arrested for complicity in coca production.

Coca eradication efforts informed by American war on drugs policy have proved equally damaging. Aerial spraying of the herbicide glyphosate by the Colombian government and American contractors over coca fields, a mainstay of coca eradication efforts, not only destroys the coca, but also food crops and surrounding vegetation, while harming human health and rendering soils and water systems toxic. Nothing will grow in a sprayed field. Despite heavy and indiscriminate spraying, this strategy has failed to significantly reduce cocaine production—but it has continued to harm those Indigenous communities already most victimized by the cocaine trade.

It goes without saying that those Indigenous communities have not suffered silently, but have long resisted in defense of their rights and land. Yet resistance is an extremely dangerous prospect in a land where all the guns and finances are in the hands of armed groups ready to deploy terror and violence to keep productive coca land under their control.

In regions such as the southern departments of Cauca, Putumayo, Nariño, and Caquetá—all epicenters of the armed conflict and all with sizable Indigenous populations—scores of activists are killed each year.

Nonetheless, resistance has continued despite the risks. Many Indigenous communities in these areas maintain autonomous defense forces armed only with sticks and machetes whose job it is to confront and restrict access to armed groups operating in the territory.

In the Nasa (2) reservation of Tacueyó in the department of Cauca, for example, community guards called kiwe thegnas keep a vigilant watch for armed groups intruding on their land. Violent reactions to this work on the part of armed groups are not uncommon.

On October 29, 2019, five kiwes of Tacueyó were shot dead in their car just outside town. Despite such losses, a spirit of defiance still presides in Indigenous communities like Tacueyó.

The roadside signboard commemorating the murdered kiwes proclaimed:

¡Seguimos en resistencia! We’ll keep resisting!

The same attitude of bravery and resistance in the face of danger that this response illustrates is echoed in Indigenous communities across the country. While drugs are a large part of the story, other economic processes, both illegal and state sponsored, have also contributed to anti-Indigenous land theft and violence across the country. Illegal logging, gold mining, and oil extraction—all of which contribute to deforestation, soil depletion, carbon emissions, and pollution of vital waterways—have long elicited Indigenous resistance.

Illegal business interests have responded by assassinating Indigenous leaders standing in the way of their plans. Due to their connections to government and foreign actors, perpetrators (from high-level illicit investors to hired assassins) frequently go unpunished by a lackadaisical and corrupt criminal justice system.

Indigenous resistance has also responded to development initiatives of the Colombian government and multinational corporations such as Occidental Petroleum and Shell to open mines and pipelines on Indigenous land. In the Valley of Sibundoy, Putumayo Department, where my research is focused, Inga and Kamëntsá (3) activists are organizing marches to protest a planned road expansion and leases to industrial mining, using traditional motifs to claim ecosovereignty over their ancestral lands.

Indigenous groups have also marched in cities around the country, most notably Cali, during the ongoing national protests that began on April 28, 2021. Many of these activists situate their struggles with respect to the long history of institutional racism and classism in Colombia, a history that the perilous situation of Indigenous activists today casts in sharp relief (4).

Despite efforts from the Colombian government to portray itself as a champion of environmental rights—rightwing president Iván Duque spoke to this effect at the COP26 summit in Glasgow last fall—Colombia remains the most dangerous country in the world for environmental activists. According to Global Witness, 227 environmental activists were murdered globally in 2020, up from 212 in 2019. 65 of those murders in 2020, and 64 in the previous year, occurred in Colombia. A third of the 2020 figure in Colombia were Indigenous and Afro-descendent people, while half were small-scale farmers. Note that according to the 2018 Colombian census, only about 4.4% of the Colombian population is Indigenous, while 10% is Afro-descendent.

These figures indicate the disparity of violence targeting Indigenous and Black Colombians standing up for environmental justice. For Indigenous people in Colombia, speaking out in defense of their peoples’ rights and the protection of the environment remains extremely dangerous.

And yet the struggle continues, with new voices of resistance each day picking up where others have fallen silent.

All are coming together to say: ¡Seguimos en resistencia!

If you wish to honor those who have given their lives to protect Indigenous rights and the environment in Colombia, and express your solidarity with those who continue the fight, consider donating to one of the following organizations that work with

Indigenous groups on the ground:

National Indigenous Organization of Colombia: https:// www.onic.org.co/en/
Amazon Conservation Team: https://www.amazonteam.org/
Amazon Frontlines: https://www.amazonfrontlines.org/
Amazon Watch: https://amazonwatch.org/
Cultural Survival: https://www.culturalsurvival.org/
International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs: https://www.iwgia.org/en/
Survival International: https://www.survivalinternational.org/

1 Coca is the leaf that, after heavy processing, results in cocaine. The problem isn’t coca itself. Coca leaves have been consumed for medicinal, ritual, and recreational purposes by Indigenous South Americans for millennia; policies aimed at the eradication of the plant itself are anti-Indigenous. The problem is cocaine. The difference is analogous to that between coffee beans and pure caffeine powder. 2 The Nasa people, also known as the Páez, are the second most populous Indigenous group in Colombia and primarily live on ancestral lands in the departments of Huila and Cauca. 3 The Inga and Kamëntsá are the two Indigenous groups that ancestrally inhabit the Sibundoy Valley. The Inga also live throughout the departments of Putumayo, Caquetá, and Nariño. 4 It must be noted that Afro-Colombians, who comprise 10% of the national population, have also carried on environmentalist struggles of their own, and that Black activists have likewise been targeted by similar kinds of violence as Indigenous activists. No account of activism and social movements in Colombia can be complete without taking stock of the contributions of Afro-Colombians.

The Insurgent Archives: What have we learned in 33 years? (nothing)

Rosie — Sat, 01 Jan 2022 17:00:22 -0700

At the end of 2021, I took on the task of organizing the archives of our previous publications. We had copies of issues for almost every single year going all the way back to the inception of the paper in 1988. While organizing these archives, I inevitably became pulled in by the radical history and scanned the contents of almost every issue within the boxes we had shoved into the back corners of the ROAR office to be forgotten.

Something that immediately caught my eye was the headline story of the first issue in our archives from 1989. The headline read “Homelessness a crime? Eugene Police increase campus patrols,” which immediately struck me as incredibly ironic given the fact that such a title could easily be a headline story on a 2022 issue of the Insurgent.

This raised an important question that led me only deeper into the depths of our archives: What have we learned and how have we evolved throughout the past 30+ years as a publication?

For the oldest issue we could find on file (from 1989), the editors chose a simple format with the name of our org “The Student Insurgent” declared in a bold font at the top. Because print was the dominant form of news and media consumption prior to the explosion of the internet in the 1990s, the Insurgent did not need to rely on colorful eye catching art and was instead able to draw in readers with their bold headlines and small pieces of symbolism like the small drawing tucked in the masthead.

When contrasting the first publication of the Insurgent to the latest publication, I noticed many large differences between the two (aside from the obvious aesthetic differences). The first publication from 1989 sits at a modest 8 pages while the December 2021 issue is almost twice the size at 20 pages. This is of course due to the fact that when the first issue was produced, the insurgent was brand new, while in 2021, we have many years of pre-established cred to garner interest and submissions.

While not as flashy as our more modern installments, the older issues of the Insurgent still boast a creative spirit with drawings, poetry, and many other forms of art embedded throughout every single issue.

Though the style and formatting of the Insurgent has changed drastically throughout the years as the torch has been passed and each editing team leaves their own unique mark, the most important thing has stayed consistent: the Insurgent has and will remain a collection of radical voices coming together to address the most pressing issues.

Important themes that have held strong throughout the entirety of the Insurgent’s history are police reform, anti capitalism, anti-war, anti-colonialism, and the uplifting of marginalized voices.

Though there is frustration to be expressed for the fact that many of the stories printed in issues from over 20 years ago could be copy and pasted directly into a modern day issue, It speaks to the resilience of radical voices. The fact that we have been preaching the same things for decades without result in many cases is very indicative of the way the US and other western countries continue to ignore the voices of their people in favor of perceived economic benefit. However, if the increase in content over the past 30+ years is any indication, the radical spirit continues to burn and it only becomes brighter as more people begin waking up to the realities we face in the wake of late stage capitalism.

If we have learned anything in the past decades, it’s that while writing about inequalities and radical news is important to engage and ignite the radical spirit, it’s even more important that we do something with that fire.

Writing about action is not enough, we must engage the radical spirit in every facet of our lives if we want to see true change enacted and make sure the issues that we write about now are solved by the time someone wants to write another archive story 30 years from now.

The Student Worker Manifesto

Strawberry Jello — Sat, 01 Jan 2022 17:00:22 -0700

Insofar as the rights and interests to which the student workers of University Housing are concerned, a coherent set of goals is necessary. Such goals must be of sufficient scope so as to meaningfully impact student workers and be achievable through methods practical to implement. We, as student workers for University Housing, have both a moral and practical imperative to achieve these goals.

Thus I submit this manifesto, a comprehensive list of goals and ideals, so as to give us purpose and something to strive for:

The establishment of a union of student workers by student workers for the explicit purpose of advancing the cause of worker rights. This is the prerequisite for any and all other initiatives proposed by this document.
The guarantee of prosperity for all employees of University Housing, such that concerns of debt and poverty are nullified. This requires primarily a drastic increase of wages, no less than $20 per hour.
The guarantee of security for all employees of University Housing, such that concerns of arbitrary job loss are nullified. This would require the implementation of legally binding retention assurances in all employee contracts.
The proper observance of safety protocols during the COVID-19 pandemic. These measures need to ensure the physical safety of all staff members, the use of unlimited paid sick days to prevent the spread of the disease, and the guarantee of full time pay during all pandemic related closures.
The ability to pursue one’s own personal goals while employed. This can be practically achieved by giving no fewer than 30 paid vacation days per year, in addition to a guaranteed year of paid maternity leave for both parents, regardless of gender. Additionally, student workers must be empowered to democratically distribute their schedules, so as to ensure that everyone may have their work accommodate their personal lives.

After these first five goals have been achieved, a Student Workers Union may begin working to achieve objectives which will solidify and reinforce these gains:

The establishment of nascent worker democracy. By subsuming all non-logistical duties of the middle and upper management into the greater body of workers, more direct and efficient organization of the workplace may occur.
The equal distribution of profits to all workers. Such a policy would result in the capital made by University Housing to be equally shared by those who actually created it.
The abolition of all higher posts within the organization that do not explicitly serve some vital service, ensuring that wealth is not funneled to those who have not contributed to its creation.
The ultimate dissolution of University Housing corporation as a profit-generating mechanism, and finally—
The refocusing of services formerly provided by the corporate mechanisms of University Housing into simply holding value in and of themselves. This entails the excising of all activities currently carried out by University Housing to generate profit, such as charging rent for dorms and withholding necessities such as food behind a cost barrier. Such things will be distributed freely to those who need them, with the inefficiencies of the market fully done away with. This final step may only be truly achieved when the cause for worker rights has not only been achieved here, but throughout the rest of society as well.

The advancement of worker rights is only one vital facet of a much larger cause for social horizontalization. One person alone cannot possibly give voice to millions. Therefore, I must state that the goals and ideals I present to you in this manifesto are purely of my own creation. A true manifesto must be the creation of us all. This gives further reason for us to organize, so that we may create goals which we may all agree to aspire to. To ensure that we, the student workers of University Housing, are given the chance to thrive during these formative years of our lives, those goals must be achieved. By virtue of our humanity we deserve these rights long denied to us.

Take action, organize, and we may yet take back our futures!

UO Coalition Organizes Safety Demonstration

Eric Howanietz — Sat, 01 Jan 2022 17:00:22 -0700

On Friday Jan 21st 11:30am The Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation (GTFF) lead a “Health and Safety speakout” with a diverse coalition of campus organizations in solidarity. The original speak out was planned to be in front of the Administration building at Johnson Hall.

But organizers claimed they had received “a slap on the wrist” about a protest earlier that week in front of the admin building and acquiesced to a location change in front of the EMU.

The voice of the speak out was clearly directed at administration policy concerning the recent Omicron surge. Grad students, teachers, and undergrads all voiced serious health and safety fears as the 2022 winter term unfolds. The legacy of administration mismanagement was widely reiterated as going back to the now infamous March 2020 Board of Trustees meeting. Chairman Chuck Lillis shoved past student protesters in order to ram through a disastrous neo-liberal tuition policy (Guaranteed Tuition) and spend millions on a new jumbotron for Autzen Stadium.

The broad coalition included support from United Academics, ASUO, Democratize UO, National Lawyers Guild, Climate Justice League, and Insurgent. There was even a growing voice for the nascent student workers union forming on campus. Grad Union members talked about policies where existing international residents of the graduate village were displaced to make room for medical isolation facilities with no concern for the previous occupants.

Others were disturbed by the lack of policy information, access to infection data, and the transparency of decision-making processes. The staff organizer of GTFF Michael Marchman says the union filed an unfair labor practices claim about the admin’s handling of working conditions.

Marchman is also hopeful that a student workers union will help create labor continuity across all university employees and believes that there are not many places in the country ripe for such a situation.

Organizers are also promoting the Thursday January 27th Starbucks Union rally at 29th & Willamette St. Many are hopeful that this will be a new phase of service worker organizing that will help renew past traditions of community solidarity.

Where are they? Remembering Missing and Murdered Land Defenders

J. Ellis — Sat, 01 Jan 2022 17:00:22 -0700

We realized shortly before entering 2022 that we would be remiss if we did not document and discuss the Global Witness report that came out in September 2021. Perhaps you’ve seen the headlines:

“Murders of environment and land defenders at record high”

September 13, 2021 –The Guardian

“It Was The Deadliest Year Ever For Land And Environmental Activists”

September 13, 2021 –NPR

Or read the report itself. Scrolling through web page after web page of search results pertaining to the report, one thing is obvious— the news coverage and media attention is nothing compared to the coverage of the infamous Gabby Petito case, which hit the headlines the same week as the annual Global Witness report.

The Global Witness report was almost entirely discussed by independent, left-wing media groups, and momentum in relation to it dissipated in a matter of a few weeks.

Meanwhile, searching the name “Gabby Petito’’ turns up results from major media outlets from as recent as a few days ago. Some journalists and scholars have already pointed out the phenomena called “missing white women syndrome,” emphasizing the colonial disparities evident when investigating the disappearances and murders of cisgender Caucasian women in comparison to missing and murdered Indigenous women and POC in general.

Only a couple months after the release of the Global Witness report, The Guardian published an article about Oaxacan land defender Irma Galindo Barrios, reported missing in late October 2021 after she didn’t attend a scheduled virtual meeting that aimed to instate governmental mechanisms for protecting journalists and land defenders.

Photo: Irma Galindo Barrios, courtesy of The Guardian.

Her disappearance is speculated to coincide with a series of attacks against her home municipality in late October, where over a period of three days a group of 70 heavily armed people raided several villages whose residents were fighting against deforestation. Aside from a little hubbub for a week in November, her name hasn’t been mentioned in a headline since. Her fate is still unknown. The 2021 report brings to light the disparity in privilege and representation between Western and Global South environmentalists.

Key findings reveal shocking statistics: globally 227 forest, water, and ecosystem defenders were killed in 2020. All murders took place in the Global South. This is a conservative estimate, since counts are dependent on the transparency of governments and media across the world. The 227 figure is the highest number of defender deaths on record, breaking the record from the 2020 report where a record 212 activists were killed in 2019. These findings indicate that there have been an average of 4 murders per week since the signing of the 2016 Paris Accord.

Worse yet, over a third of these killings were Indigenous land defenders, highly disproportionate considering Indigenous people make up 5% of the world’s population. In all, the rate of murders in the Global South has doubled since 2013.

We’re hardly into 2022 and there have already been more reports of targeted killings in Central and South American nations, casting an omen of what’s to come as the climate crisis intensifies and resource conflicts along with it. The Guardian contributes to most of the coverage of these crimes, publishing an article on January 13, 2022 about a Brazilian family of turtle breeders found shot to death in their home, in the Amazonian state Pará.

In the 2021 report, Brazil was recorded as the nation with the 4th highest murder rate, with a total of 20 activists who lost their lives defending their land. Here we are, three weeks into 2022 and we already have three more names to add to the tally: José Gomes, Márcia Nunes Lisboa, and their teenage daughter Joane Nunes Lisboa. Indigenous people are deliberately targeted so that capitalists and corporations can get rid of the main obstacle to their acquisition of profit: the people who have native claim to the land and its resources who are willing to give their lives to defend it.

Yet another Indigenous life has already been taken in 2022, Indigenous Lenca leader Pablo Isabel Hernandez was shot to death on his way to church with his family. This murder occurred a little over a year after the death of Juan Carlos Cerros Escalante, another member of the Lenca group shot dead in March 2020.

The Lenca group has historically been targeted for their efforts to resist colonial damming projects and other forms of environmental degradation in Honduras. Perhaps you remember the headlines from 2016 about the murder of Berta Caceres, a Goldman Prize recipient and Lenca woman who led a successful movement against damming in her native Honduras. These murders showcase how members of the Lenca group and many other Indigenous peoples are paying the ultimate price for their efforts to protect the irreplaceable.

This trend in loss of life demonstrates the callous entitlement of corporations, and is sure to continue as long as disaster capitalism persists. I dread what the next Global Witness report will have to say.

Global South environmental activists and their communities are disproportionately facing the brunt of the consequences of both climate change and the corporate greed driving it. While corporate seizure of resources and land have existed everywhere since the dawn of capitalist and colonial systems, we know and acknowledge that the impacts are not evenly distributed.

There is a level of privilege operating in Western countries that provide protections to modern-day land defenders that do not exist in many other parts of the world. The December 2021 issue of The Student Insurgent celebrated the various successes of Lane County forest defenders here in Oregon. The group of activists that led the movement were primarily of settler-descent, and we had the power of the law behind us as we challenged logging operations in the Willamette National Forest— at one successful occupation in the Breitenbush Watershed, I met and talked with at least three distinguished lawyers from the Willamette Valley region, some from the CLDC.

With that type of money and power involved in these actions, we felt assured that we had relative immunity to state and corporate pushback. To many of the participants, the intensity of the actions from that week are a rare occurrence, in part due to the planning it requires; but I assert that this is also due to the fact that none of us directly depend on that land for physical wellbeing and cultural survival day-in and day-out.

Most of us drove more than an hour and a half out from Eugene to this remote area along Hwy 126—unlike many activists around the world, this was not our home we must compulsively defend.

However, I couldn’t help but note the irony of a group of majority settler- descent activists occupying already colonially occupied native territory to fight for its protection. The stakes for us here in so-called “Oregon,” are meager compared to the risks that activists in the Global South face on a daily basis.

We are fortunate that we don’t have to fear for our lives, that we possess the social capital necessary to stand up to economic capital, and that this isn’t a daily fight for our very livelihoods, but rather an ecocentric stance that we can pick-and-choose when we want to take the time to demonstrate.

It is worth reminding that of the 227 deaths recorded in 2020, not a single American or Canadian land defender went missing or was murdered.

So what is to be done about this blatant disparity? How can activists in the Global North demonstrate solidarity with those with less protections elsewhere?

At present, there seems to only be lukewarm solutions to this problem, like long-winded policy battles in undemocratic nations, or a push for more “visibility,” a vague term that usually amounts to little tangible improvements.

But I concede that a good place to start is to address the transparency and representation (or lack thereof) of these issues in Western media. As I’ve demonstrated, the majority of the news media about missing and murdered environmental activists are covered by the minority independent and progressive-leaning media groups like The Guardian, Democracy Now! and Liberation. You don’t see these headlines often enough in the Associated Press, CNN, Fox News, NBC News, or The Washington Post, for example (although, in some ways, this might be for the best considering the embedded biases driven by profit incentives in neoliberal media).

In order for this issue to become a topic of discussion in every household, we need it to transcend its reliance on a few savvy and committed investigative journalists.

Instead, I’d like to see every true-crime fanatic on Youtube talking about this as much as they talk about missing and murdered white women and other suburban tragedies; I want to see the Diane Sawyers of the world devote their prime-time broadcasts to this crisis, and I want to see a world where news-media is no longer corporate, profit-driven, and enshrined in capitalism so that the topics that truly matter are represented as such.

In the age of information, there is no reason that issues like this should slip through the cracks. The fact that they do shows the cognitive dissonance that separates Western privilege from Global South struggle. Let’s begin by saying their names, and do not stop until justice is brought to every land defender on Earth.

All statistics provided by the 2021 Global Witness Report

Working Class History in Eugene's Whiteaker Neighborhood

Eugene Housing and Neighborhood Defense — Sat, 01 Jan 2022 17:00:22 -0700

See the original report in its entirety

INTRODUCTION:

The Whiteaker neighborhood is sometimes called Eugene’s “oldest and poorest neighborhood.” There is a high concentration of tenants and people living in poverty living here, and the numbers continue to increase each year as wages fall and costs rise.

However, the trend will eventually reverse, not because working class people are becoming homeowners or gaining wealth, but because the working class are being displaced and replaced– unless something is done to stop it. Like much of the city, the Whiteaker is currently experiencing rapid development and rising rent prices, an intentional process of capitalist displacement sometimes referred to as “gentrification.” By looking at the history of the neighborhood, we can see how its working class character came to be and how we can fight to unite and protect the working class from further exploitation and abuse.

NEIGHBORHOOD OF CONTRADICTIONS:

In the Whiteaker a pristine rose garden lays blocks from large homeless camps, derelict apartment complexes sit across the street from renovated houses worth half a million dollars, and shiny new breweries and restaurants fill old industrial warehouses.

As we can see, contradictions are stark in this neighborhood, especially between the needs of the working class and the desires of the developers, landlords, and other members of the capitalist class. The layout of the neighborhood has contradictions itself. It is split north and south by a railroad and east and west by a highway overpass.

This creates noise and air pollution. However, the neighborhood was also designed to preserve some natural areas, so it’s bordered with large green park spaces and bike paths, primarily to the north along the Willamette River.

EARLY HISTORY OF THE WHITEAKER:

In the area now known as the Whiteaker neighborhood of Eugene, Kalapuya people lived, traded, gathered food, and used the Willamette River for transportation since time immemorial. After white settlers arrived in the 1800s, the Whiteaker was one of the first established neighborhoods in Eugene. The neighborhood was initially mostly made up of residential homes and farms and saw increased industrial development after the construction of railroads in the 1870s.

Importantly, Black people were legally prohibited from living in Oregon until 1926, and were prevented from renting and owning property in Eugene until the late 20th century due to redlining and other discriminatory practices. The impacts of these practices continue to this day.

Schools and churches were built in the 1939s. After WWII, the neighborhood offered jobs at new lumber yards, wholesale businesses, nurseries, grocers, warehouses, and gas stations. The early 20th century motor age encouraged construction of highway arteries and motels among them. Apartment buildings were built in the 1960s-70s, many of which remain in use and have yet to be updated.

THE IMPACTS OF INDUSTRY:

Like many other US industrialized working class neighborhoods, the Whiteaker saw dramatic economic decline when most production moved out of the country to exploit workers internationally. Many businesses went bankrupt or got bought out by corporations. Oregon’s timber industry declined and rural jobs disappeared, pushing more workers into urban areas such as Eugene. Tenants became poorer, and more workers became tenants as saving for down payments on home became nearly impossible. Landlords could now easily neglect their buildings and exploit their tenants who were dependent on their landlords to remain in their own neighborhood. The factories, mills, and trainyards that brought jobs close to the residential neighborhoods also brought pollution from trains, road construction, new highways, and heavy vehicle traffic. Those who could afford to leave and then commute from further out of town could avoid the environmental health impacts, but they took their wealth with them.

HISTORY OF RESISTANCE:

From the 1960’s to the early 2000’s, the Whiteaker became known for its residents’ involvement in environmental, anti-war, and anti-globalization activism. However, after years of failed tactics and state surveillance, only the aesthetics of these movements remain. Some former members of these movements live in insular housing cooperatives in the neighborhood, but these models of housing have done nothing for the majority of working class people. By and large community work and organizing in the neighborhood is not shaped or led by the working class. It is instead carried out by liberal advocacy groups and state sanctioned non-profits.

These groups do not seek to change the capitalist system to truly improve the lives of the working class, but instead to preserve it by giving small handouts and stifling real organizing.

DEVELOPMENT AT WHOSE EXPENSE?

Since the Whiteaker developed a “mixed use” character prior to Eugene city zoning in 1948, it has remained a unique mix of residential, industrial, and commercial pockets unlike other areas of the city. Most recently, the Whiteaker has been impacted primarily by commercial development of new service industry businesses, including the sizeable California corporation-owned Nikasi Brewery and Anheuser-Busch owned Hop Valley Brewery. Importantly, the popularity and financial success of these new businesses does not equate to fair compensation or healthcare benefits for service industry workers. None of the neighborhood’s customer service workplaces are unionized.

PRICED OUT AND POLICED:

This newest wave of commercial development has attracted capitalists and upper class residents to the once neglected neighborhood. They now want to invest in and relocate there. In regards to housing, rather than constructing new buildings like some other parts of town,older homes are being flipped and sold at huge profits to wealthy families, landlords, and short-term rental investors. As the area becomes more desirable, rents are raised to price out and evict long-term tenants. Wealth returning to the neighborhood means poor and working class people are being displaced. Some are forced to find cheaper rentals in different neighborhoods or other cities altogether. But others are forced on to the streets, unable to afford rising costs of housing. A substantial amount of homeless people live in the parks in the Whiteaker area, especially under the overpass at Washington Jefferson Park. The City has responded to this with increased policing, violence, and criminalization of the poor and homeless.

WORKING CLASS AND TENANTS UNITE!

A historical, economic process has led to the displacement of tenants and highly visible wealth disparity in the Whiteaker, not by accident but by design. Collaboration with politicians, landlords, and business owners whose policies and practices created these conditions cannot resolve these contradictions to stabilize living conditions for the working class in the Whiteaker and other parts of Eugene.

We must resist all divide and conquer strategies used by the state that encourage us to blame the poor for their own suffering, call the police on each other, and thank the capitalists for charity or small donations. Working class tenants must organize against landlords and developers to create strong communities that keep workers housed and predatory capitalists out of our neighborhoods.

Medical Elitism in America

Rosie — Sat, 01 Jan 2022 14:42:28 -0700

Since the dawn of modern medicine, only those with power and privilege were able to enter a field as “prestigious” as medicine. Despite traditional medicine and healing being historically practiced by women, the emergence of modern medicine was the emergence of medical elitism and transformed into an opportunity for white men to become the highest authority on health. During the rise of modern medicine in the United States, the only people with the power and privilege to enter the medical field were white men. Women who wanted to enter the medical field could do so as midwives, but the physicians and surgeons were men. Women and people of color did not start having a true presence in the medical field until the late 1970’s when multiple anti-discrimination laws were passed, however, even in 1985, only 16% of practicing physicians were female, and in 2021, still only 36% are female compared to a whopping 64% of physicians being male. Because men were the ultimate authority on medicine from the 17th century onwards, practically every medical text until the late 20th century was written by white men who used other white men as the primary health model.

This absence of women and BIPOC from the healthcare industry has caused huge disparities when it comes to healthcare. Due to this absence of diversity—not only in practitioners but also in textbooks and treatment methods— there are many diseases that present differently in different sexes and ethnicities that are often misdiagnosed or go unnoticed because of the lack of information regarding how they affect different groups. There is still an extreme lack of diversity in present day clinical studies, which is likely due to the well deserved mistrust that many BIPOC have of the healthcare industry because of numerous human rights violations, experiments, incidents of medical malpractice, and discrimination against them by the western medical system (the most well known example being the Tuskegee experiments).

An effective way to combat the gross inequalities that permeate the medical system would be to have more women and BIPOC practitioners, however the systems currently in place are still incredibly restrictive. In order to become a practicing physician, one must undergo 4 years of undergraduate education and 4 years of medical school before even earning an income. At public 4-year institutions, the average in-state tuition and required fees total $9,308 per year; out-of-state tuition and fees average $26,427. At private 4-year institutions, the average tuition and fees at a nonprofit college total $35,801 annually; at for-profit institutions, tuition and fees average $15,156 annually.

After finishing undergraduate studies “an applicant to 15 medical schools can easily spend over $10,000 in the application process.” The average cost of 4 years of medical school in America in 2019-2020 was $250,222 at public institutions and $330,180 at private colleges, according to a fall 2020 report issued by the Association of American Medical Colleges. These are not costs that the average American citizen can handle without loans (or even with loans). The inability to bear those costs is already a huge deterrent for many, and those with the ability to spend copious amounts of money on schooling are still majority white men (or the children of those white men). Even if one is able to bear the cost of undergrad and medical school with scholarships or loans, the intense rigor and pace of medical school can be equated to military hazing that turns eager medical students into technocratic zombies more concerned over the monetary gains they can make back rather than the treatment of patients. This system provides a functional barrier between the medical field and potential doctors who could bring actual diversity and consideration for the patients they treat. While conservatives will vehemently deny it, the white patriarchy still heavily permeates every single facet of our lives, including our bodies and our health. It uses capitalism as a way to control and exploit women and BIPOC while continuously benefiting the people in power.

While we have certainly made progress in diversifying the medical industry since the early 17th century, inequality still dominates the health industry and prevents millions of people from receiving the proper health care they deserve. This system operates on so many levels to industrialize and privatize the healthcare system for profit while neglecting the health of its people. A capitalist medical system only further breeds the exploitation of those without privilege, and it won’t be sustainable for much longer as the cracks in the system continue to spread with the increase of disease, pandemics, and climate refugees. We can only hope that these clear cracks in the system continue to wake people up to the deeply flawed system in place and somehow systemic change will be brought about before it’s too late.

Amerikkka

anm — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 00:00:00 -0700

Rittenhouse and Arbery Rulings: A Response

Depictions of white supremacy as we celebrate white supremacy. That’s as poetic and telling as it can be in another day of living melanated in Amerikkka. To not only have to experience the watering down of genocide each year and the celebration of it, but to witness the justice system that was born from genocide release another white murderer. Despite what so many think tanks say about freedom and self defense—the privilege white Amerikkka loves to cling on to— I am reminded of the starts of my own activism: the story of Tamir Rice, a black 12 year old boy who died playing with a toy gun outside of his house gunned down in seconds by the police, his sister detained moments later. And yet Rittenhouse carries an M&P-15, takes lives and cries on the stand for his freedom. Isn’t this the Amerikkka we have known to suffer and fear in? That I, with melanated skin, could be locked away or gunned down on a whim of the white nationalists around me.

I could be killed without consequence to my murderers. I could be killed while jogging for assumptions that are no responsibility of my own because my melanin is threatening. But when white skin turns red with fear or disgust and I am the target, I become their responsibility to be taken care of.

They are executioner, jury, and judge.

In their own court of law. Their own culture based upon excusing and acting within their racism and tolerating the murder of us, melanated, because we are a threat to them.

When will Amerikkka and its white constituents realize they are the threat to us? They are murdering us in the street, they target us and minimize us. Yet we do not get to yell self defense; women locked away for murdering their rapists and abusers get no room or loophole to claim to self-defense. Cynthonia Brown imprisoned for 15 years, parole for 10. Philando Castile, a licensed gun owner, killed as he reaches for his documents proving he has as much right as anyone else. We do not get the mercy of self defense. We get lies, lead, and gravestones.

Justice will never be found in systems made so obviously against us. Justice can never be served when white bodies, whether prosecution, defense or judge, are the only ones arguing in the room. Justice can never be found when the loopholes of the law can be highlighted for white Amerikkka with crocodile tears but not the dead, silent or silenced melanated victims of Amerikkka. And yet, a white teenager may hold and operate a Smith & Wesson M&P-15 in public space and walk away free of consequence. He has officers, the public and judge defending on his behalf because of his youth, his innocence.

But what of every slaughtered black and brown person’s innocence? What of our innocence and right to gather and challenge the systems murdering us?

CIA, Go Away!

J. Ellis — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 00:00:00 -0700

In the first couple weeks of November, undergraduate and graduate students across all departments received their weekly advising emails. Those of us who actually read these newsletter updates couldn’t help but notice a curious opportunity announced in fine print:

Virtually any job you can imagine is available at the CIA – plus, some you can't even imagine

This raised some questions: Who arranged for the CIA to recruit on campus, and why? Most importantly, what can we do to stop it from happening?During a time of resurgence for campus organizing, with groups such as Cops off Campus calling for the abolition of campus police presence, nothing feels like more of a challenge to these causes than an open invitation for the world’s cops to come poach young talent at the University of Oregon.

Luckily the GTFF -the university’s backbone- mobilized a countermovement to denounce the CIA’s sneaky recruitment tactics and criminal legacy.

Members of GTFF called for a teach-in on the afternoon of November 10 in the courtyard outside of Tykeson Hall, where just inside CIA recruiters were stationed with the task of marketing global terrorism campaigns as a career advancement opportunity.

The recruitment announcement itself came abruptly, the countermovement against it even more so. Despite the quick turnaround, the teach-in drew about 30 individuals to attend and engage in discourse about the military industrial complex on college campuses. The teach-in was both an open forum and an opportunity for speakers to build awareness about how the CIA functions to enforce imperial hegemony— there were five speakers total that spanned disciplines from chemistry to philosophy. Each addressed different ways the CIA has caused harm globally, and a UO graduate educator kicked off the round of speeches by mentioning the most radicalizing Wikipedia list known to man (you know the one)

After this speaker laid the groundwork as to why oppose the CIA in the first place, the second expanded upon this by describing the agency as a “United States sponsored instrument of death,” and called to put an end to campus recruitment and overall abolition of the CIA. Every speaker to follow echoed this sentiment, emphasizing how the CIA solely exists to uphold the dynamics of racial capitalism by infiltrating institutions such as governments, universities, and medicine. Speakers traced the history of the CIA, its legacy, and its interventions in global liberation struggles.

Like the police, the CIA was born out of a unique sociopolitical context in history that is no longer relevant to modern conditions. The CIA was established in 1947 at the dawn of the Cold War to monitor Soviet counterintelligence, intended for termination at the end of the war.

So why has the CIA maintained relevance all these years later?

The answer should be obvious by now: the United States government made it profitable.

In President Eisenhower’s 1961 farewell address, he famously cautioned against a term he dubbed the “military industrial complex,” (MIC) a phenomena that has since sedimented itself within modern political economies. The military industrial complex made war a business, instead of a social burden.

The rest of the speakers explained how these dynamics function in a recruitment setting, discussing the “militainment” industry (i.e. Marvel, Jason Bourne, Top Gun, Black Ops…) and other enticement strategies. Much of the CIA’s continued relevance depends on flashy optics such as these.

From its inception, the CIA engaged in propaganda and clandestine operations to mold public perception and maintain political approval.

Mind you, this isn’t just heresy coming from a bunch of tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy theorists: the operations conducted by the CIA that were mentioned are all public record, documented through testimonies from former Presidents, CIA Directors, whistleblowers, and academic works such as the Stanford Law School’s 2012 study “Life Under Drones: Death, Injury, and Trauma to Civilians from US Drone Practices in Pakistan.” Pakistan being the same country where the agency also staged a fake polio vaccine drive in 2011.

In the open forum following the speeches, participants had the opportunity to share their knowledge and lament imperialism.

One attendee, Jane Cramer, spoke on the CIA’s long history of undermining justice movements around the world, allowing the United States to control any given foreign state’s politics and resources. Cramer teaches a political science course at the UO called “US Interventions in Developing Nations,” where students study the many US military/CIA interventions of the last century. Not only does Cramer consider the agency’s atrocities committed abroad, she is also an astute watchdog locally; observing the subtle ways the CIA operates to placate civilians, appeal to both public and private interests, and cash in on the military industrial complex.

Cramer explained the various tactics (both at the event and later in a follow-up interview) that the CIA uses to entice UO’s sitting ducks to apply. It is crucial to understand that much of the CIA’s work is carried out in the reportedly mundane analysis sector, a field of work that the agency tries to sell as routine bureaucratic pencil-pushing— the perfect entry-level job.

Meanwhile, these operations are more explicitly sinister, agents in this line of work are responsible for carrying out strategies developed by the CIA, such as Operation Ajax. The CIA renders evil banal via bureaucratic detachment and flattering optics, minimizing the moral implications of their mission by characterizing a day at work like any other desk job: paperwork and aimless tasks. To prospective employees, this proves effective enough for recruitment; the general information meeting for recruitment on November 9th reportedly had 60 in attendance. The countermovement was roughly half that size. The agency’s warm reception on campus is just another example of the marriage between military and educational industrial complexes. In fact, when Eisenhower first coined the term MIC, he referred to academics as one of the forces that fuels the system. Look into any reputable university in this country, and in all likelihood you’ll find they have close working relationships with instruments of violence.

After all, much of defense technology relies on innovation, a seemingly endless resource on university campuses. This phenomenon is occurring nationally. It is commonplace for university advising departments to funnel its brightest students into the war machine; whether working for the CIA, the FBI, the US Military, or defense contractors. Their deceptively simple recruitment strategies attract vulnerable students seeking job security, and manipulate this need by trapping young professionals in contracts that copyright and patent their organic intellectual property, which strips them of their creative autonomy/agency before their lives have even begun.

This entrapment is especially apparent at schools with robust STEM programs, such as MIT or Arizona State (ASU). An engineering student at ASU anonymously tipped the Insurgent onto the extent of power defense contractors possess in the school’s research and development projects. At ASU, engineering students have to complete a capstone research curriculum in order to earn their degrees. In doing so, many initiate internships with companies that partner with this program. It just so happens that most of the partner companies are some of the largest defense contractors in the world: Raytheon (one project), Honeywell Aerospace (twelve projects—some aerospace, some defense), Northrop Grumman (one project), and the US Air Force (one project).

According to the whistleblower, some project requirements mandate that students sign NDAs before they even really know what they are signing up for. Not only do their ideas become the property of corporations, but they may also think they are signing on to design the latest spacecraft and end up producing warheads. You may have to be a rocket scientist to qualify for a spot at Raytheon, but you certainly don’t have to be one to see the ethical dilemma these programs pose.

The crowd that gathered outside Tykeson Hall that Wednesday took essential first steps in a much larger resistance against the union of the education and military industrial complexes at the University of Oregon. Saying no to the CIA is saying no to predatory recruitment, no to cops, no to war, and no to imperialism. Our defiance, while small in scale to what we’re up against, embodies a broader decolonial and egalitarian project that works to dismantle racial capitalism and the systems that uphold it.

The University’s continued invitation to military recruiters is veiled violence. If the school really means anything by its land acknowledgements or “statements condemning racism,” then structures of state and police violence would no longer be welcome on campus.

Cops Off Campus Kick-Off

Eric Howanietz — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 00:00:00 -0700

ASUO insider reveals Student Activity Fees funding police surveillance through Duck Rides

Cops Off Campus launched their November 4th kickoff meeting to a packed lecture hall at UO. The Group has recently changed names from Disarm UO to Cops Off Campus (COC) to support a larger police abolitionist movement unfolding across the region. Despite this regional merger the group still has much of the grassroots character of its previous iteration as Disarm UO. Turn over in the group from student graduations appear to have only temporarily hindered the group and it has begun a pivot toward a more open and public organization. Organizers emphasize that when the group took off during the 2020 George Floyd uprising there was a determined effort to cement the group’s mission as an abolitionist, anti-racist, and anti- capitalist group. This appears to have been well thought out in a series of detailed statements the group presented at the beginning of the Nov 4th meeting. This has also meant that the group has rejected reformist proposals and dialogue with UOPD administration, such as those led by the Associated Students of the University of Oregon (ASUO).

The narrative that COC presents shows how the creation of the UOPD in 2011 is in no way a longstanding institution of UO that cannot be dismantled or reversed. The UOPD’s inception coincided with a broad Neo liberal restructuring that occurred across campus at that same time and emphasized the interest of private donors and corporate partnerships. This overall move towards privatization even restructured the Universities’ governing body the Board of Trustees. Despite overwhelming student opposition to the creation of the UOPD, the Oregon Senate passed SB 405 with heavy lobbying from corporate funded PACs and wealthy donors leading the charge. The ultimate goal of Cops off Campus is abolition of police. But they note that the UOPD currently has no civilian review board and no formal complaint process, giving UOPD broad unchecked powers in its jurisdiction.

Even more worrying is that the UOPD arrests and uses force against black people at a rate roughly five times relative to population, according to COC’s literature. UOPD has also been involved in an alarming number of police shootings of people of color, including the 2019 killing of Eliborio Rodriguez. One serious issue that Cops Off Campus is currently working to change is the UOPD’s aggressive takeover of the former Campus Safe Rides, now called Duck Rides. Safe Rides was initially envisioned as branch of the UO Women’s Center with a mission of preventing sexual violence on campus. Safe Rides operated independently for years but in 2018 was facing operational difficulty and a partnership with UOPD was set in motion to relieve staffing and vehicle maintenance issues. Soon after this partnership began the already underpaid staff was faced with police domination of what was originally envisioned as a collective feminist empowerment organization. Dashcams were installed in Safe Ride vehicles and UOPD began to use Safe Ride as what it termed, “a second pair of eyes on campus.” This has led to dashcam footage being used as evidence by police. UOPD now sits in on all Safe Rides (now Duck Rides) meetings and the once devoted staff now worry that the organization has strayed from its community mission.

In a bombshell dropped by a source inside ASUO at the Nov 4th Cops Off Campus meeting, it was revealed that 90% of Duck Rides is funded by “I-Fees” directly paid for by students. The implication of this is that student activity fees (I-Fees) are now directly paying for a branch of the UOPD and police surveillance on campus. In the coming weeks COC will be releasing an extensive zine which details the problematic relationship between UOPD and the recently renamed Duck Rides.

Cops off Campus Timeline

David Patrick Schranck Jr David Leferve on Behalf of the UOYDSA Organizing Committee

David Patrick Schranck Jr. — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 00:00:00 -0700

Rittenhouse and Arbery Rulings: A Response

On the night of August 25th, 2020, Kyle Rittenhouse shot three people, killing two and injuring one, who were attending a Black Lives Matter protest in Kenosha, WI in the wake of the police shooting of Jacob Blake. Rittenhouse, who was a minor at the time, had traveled across state lines with an AR-15 assault rifle he didn’t own under the guise of defending private property and private capital after the unrest in the city had led to property damage on previous nights. On November 19th, 2021, Rittenhouse was acquitted on all charges against him for his actions on that night.

The UO Young Democratic Socialists of America unequivocally condemns this verdict, the precedent it creates, and the darkest elements of American society it represents.

During the afternoon of February 23rd, 2020, Ahmaud Arbery, an unarmed Black man, was chased down, shot, and killed by three white men: Travis McMichael, Gregory McMichael, and William Bryan Jr., while he was out jogging. These men killed Arbery because they claimed that they believed, with no evidence, him to be the perpetrator of a series of break-ins that had occurred in their neighborhood. On November 24th, 2021, the McMichaels and Bryan were all found guilty of multiple charges, including murder.

Our organization commends this verdict, overcoming a nearly all-white jury, but we recognize that even this result will not fully deliver true and lasting justice.

The United States of America was created by white settler-colonialists who committed genocide against Native Americans and dispossessed them of their land and whose entire economic system was constructed around the exploitation of Africans forced into chattel slavery. It is a state that has continued and deepened these divisions after the failure of post- Civil War Reconstruction by enforcing brutal apartheid conditions and continually criminalizing people of color, particularly Black people. It is a government founded by land-owning white men and designed to ensure their power and influence above all other citizens.

Under these circumstances, the verdict in the Kyle Rittenhouse case cannot be seen as an anomaly nor does it represent a failure of the system. The United States’ criminal “justice” system is working just as designed. Additionally, we must also acknowledge that the conviction in the case of the three men who killed Ahmaud Arbery does not truly represent enduring change as carceral solutions to the deep-seated horrors of American racism will always be ineffective and insufficient.

These cases must remind us that history is not a continual trajectory of increasing progress, but is instead a constant struggle between oppressed and oppressor. The harm committed by these white men, although occurring under very different circumstances, all are representative of a culture that has emboldened and approved white supremacist vigilante violence.

As an organization of anti-capitalists across the left-wing spectrum, we recognize that the resistance against white supremacy is integral to class struggle as a whole. We commit to acting in solidarity with groups who are organizing in our community and across the nation against white supremacy and the prison industrial complex.

Additionally, we are compelled to make clear that although some short-term reforms (such as electing progressive prosecutors, moving towards the decriminalization of petty and non-violent offenses, working to defund and dismantle police departments, etc.) can bring about some minor but important progress, ultimately we have to be constantly pushing towards abolishing our deeply corrupted and racist prison industrial complex and rebuilding from scratch with a new, bold vision of achieving true justice and accountability for victims of harm.

The people are yearning for change and we have an obligation to ceaselessly fight to achieve these ambitious and urgently necessary goals.

Disaster Capitalist Drowned Out on Campus

Dorian Blue — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 00:00:00 -0700

A regular Wednesday guest lecture on campus became an anti-logging protest when a group of activists shut down a talk given by Tyler Freres of Freres Lumber.

Freres, a third-generation logger, came to the University of Oregon law school to talk about his company and the benefits of the post-fire logging practices his company employs. Freres and his company hope to salvage the land that was burnt following the 2020 Summer Oregon wildfires, particularly the Holiday Farm Fire.

During his justification of post-fire logging, Freres explained that the logging benefits the ecosystem.

When an audience member brought up a scientific study that proves just the opposite, Freres hastily deemed the study inaccurate and “political.”

The reality is that post fire-logging causes extreme harm to the recuperation of a forest after a burn. There is no substantive evidence that post-fire logging benefits a forest’s ecosystem.

“Rather, scientific data indicates a heightened fire risk for logged areas while hindering forest regeneration and restoration by compacting soils, damaging riparian corridors, introducing and spreading invasive species, causing erosion, adding sediment to streams, degrading water quality, and removing trees utilized for habitat.”¹

Local activists took to the scene by staging a covert demonstration. Approximately 40 minutes into Freres’s talk, one activist spoke out with a question regarding environmental concerns.

Before Freres could answer, several more activists began bombarding Freres with questions. A staggering majority of attendees were there to protest, quickly drowning out opposition.

Activists who had come prepared with signs stood up and began leading a chant.

Chants included, but were not limited to: “No more lies! Quit your corporate ties!” “Forest defense is climate defense!” And perhaps most poignant, “Quit your job!”

As quickly as the protest began, event organizers began trying to shut it down. One individual was calling for all students to leave while shoving her camera in peoples’ faces. Her attitude and flagrant use of a cell phone camera evoked a particular Karen energy.

All the while Freres is silent, blocked by an entourage to shield him from further interaction.Once the scene was made activists dispersed and left the building, told that security had been called. Students were also told that if they put their real email on the sign-up sheet that they would likely be reprimanded, as demonstrations are required to be cleared in advance.

If activists had not shut down Freres’s talk, he would have continued to spread misinformation and greenwash the lumber industry.

His claim that post-fire logging is needed for the recovery of a forest is baseless and rooted in the capitalistic desire to take advantage of disaster.

Footnotes & Citations

https://sierraforestlegacy.org/FC_FireForestEcology/FFE_SalvageLoggingScience.php ↩︎

Dune Versus Dune: Into the Duniverse

Barbara Berkeley — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 00:00:00 -0700

Art by R. Bliss

“Dune (2021) is a good movie” is not a controversial idea, and for good reason. It’s a well-made movie, and an excellent adaptation of a seemingly unadaptable book. I’m a woman of simple taste; if a movie has cool visuals and a good score, I’ll enjoy every second of it, and Dune (2021) delivered. Every shot was gorgeous, and the music added an incredible sense of atmosphere. Beyond that, Dune (2021) told a well-paced and interesting story. I went in having read part of the first book, which definitely helped me understand what was going on, but I think I would’ve enjoyed the movie regardless of whether I’d consumed the source material.

Dune (1984) is one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. If I had a dollar for every time I thought “What the hell is going on?” while watching the movie, I’d be rich beyond my wildest dreams. Every aspect of Dune (1984) is fundamentally broken; from the stilted, unnatural dialogue supplemented by even more stilted, unnatural voiceovers; to the confused aesthetic; to the campy, aggressively 80’s score. Sting was cast as Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, a crime I cannot forgive. Ultimately, the movie was so weird and unlike anything I’ve ever seen before that I can’t bring myself to hate it. I will not, however, be watching it again, at least not while sober.

If a movie adaptation of Dune doesn’t properly convey the message of the original text, it isn’t a good piece of art. Frank Herbert’s Dune is fundamentally a message against colonialism and imperialism. Paul is presented as the hero, but when he becomes the Emperor of the known universe, he rules as a tyrant and causes the death of billions. Paul’s legacy is death and suffering and despair. The Harkonnens are presented as evil and grotesque, while the Atreides are dutiful and heroic, but in the end, both are colonizers. Both are imperialists. Both are evil.

Dune (1984) shows Paul’s rise to power, but not his fall from grace. Both parts of the story are necessary for a complete understanding of Frank Herbert’s message, and by presenting Paul as a purely heroic character, Dune (1984) tells a standard white savior narrative. Dune (2021) also tells an incomplete story, but the promise of a sequel makes me more lenient in my judgement. There are hints throughout the film of the direction the narrative is heading. We see this in the fascist imagery of House Atreides, the clear class disparity between Atreides and their Fremen subjects, and Chani’s condemnation of the exploitation of her planet. Dune (2021) is by no means a perfect critique of colonialism, but it seems like a good start.

If you haven’t seen Dune (2021), go watch it. If you haven’t seen Dune (1984), you’re probably doing yourself a favor.

Fighting Disaster Capitalism in Oregon’s Fire-Burned Forests

Matron Saint of Last Chances — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 00:00:00 -0700

While communities across the West continue to rebuild from the literal ashes of fire seasons past, Oregonians are witnessing the timber industry hastily take what’s left of our fire- burned forests. Post-fire logging is the West’s brand of disaster capitalism. In the aftermath of wildfires, the timber industry turns a profit by advancing extensive logging programs in the name of “forest resilience” and “community fire safety.” Cloaked in nice- sounding euphemisms, post-fire clearcuts are still advancing on public lands and National Forests around Oregon.

Immediately after the historic 2020 Labor Day Fires, all fire impacted public land was closed to the public. In the name of public safety, gates were locked and no-trespassing signs were erected in front of well-loved national forest campgrounds, trails and backroads.

Then came the timber sales. Fire impacted private land was liquidated just weeks after the fires were out, and public land was soon to follow, with public land managers working hand in hand with Big Timber to advance plans to post-fire clearcutting. Now, post-fire so-called “salvage” logging is planned behind locked gates in the historic North Umpqua and McKenzie rivers, the Santiam State forest, and the beloved Breitenbush watershed— the site of decades of forest defense history.

The Breitenbush watershed is home to the beloved Breitenbush Hot Springs Retreat Center and surrounded by a majestic old growth forest that is home to spotted owl, salmon, and a myriad of predators. Before the forced removal of indigenous people by colonizers, this was a historic gathering place for fishing, hunting and soaking in the natural hot springs. Since the white people began managing this forest, it has seen an endless string of threats in the form of industrial logging.

In this very place on a snowy Easter Sunday morning in 1989, forest defense activists stood in the way of logging machinery in an attempt to save centuries old trees from the chainsaws. Using a multi-tiered creative blockade of the road, activists managed to hold off logging for five days before being forcibly removed by the police. Now known as the infamous “Easter Massacre,” the ultimately unsuccessful direct action resulted in the logging of ancient trees in Breitenbush. Since the Easter Massacre, the Breitenbush watershed has been the site of forest defense activism again and again.

Following the historic 2020 fires, the Willamette Forest Service clearcut old growth forest including spotted owl habitat along salmon-bearing streams around the Breitenbush summer home cabins. The Forest Service failed to notify the cabin owners before the cutting, and those who lost their cabins in the fires were forced to endure an even greater tragedy upon returning to find the surrounding old growth forest clearcut. Soon after, the Forest Service partnered with the Oregon Department of Transportation to clearcut massive 200ft corridors on either side of the road system that weaves through the area. Now, the Breitenbush watershed is once again on the chopping block as the Willamette National Forest advances another plan to clearcut century-old fire-impacted trees along the Breitenbush river. Even as conservation groups have filed a lawsuit to stop the cutting, the Forest Service (in keeping with its scandalous tradition of lawless logging), could very well move forward with clearcutting before the judge ever gets the chance to rule on the case.

One need only look to the devastating cutting that has already happened for ample reasons to oppose what’s to come. Post- fire logging turns fire resilient forests into tinder box plantations and sets the forest back decades along its natural cycle of post- fire rebirth. It also fuels climate change by releasing most of the forest’s stored carbon back into the atmosphere. The ongoing rampant post-fire logging in Breitenbush and across Oregon will forever alter the landscape of our bioregion. That is, if we don’t stop it.

Luckily, as long as there are forests standing, there will be those who stand in the way of the machines that seek to level them. In a beautiful testament to this fact, on a freezing morning this November, hours away from any city center, over fifty folks defied the federal closure order seeking to keep the public out of federal lands and took a stand to draw attention to the lawless post-fire logging proposed in Breitenbush. In an inspiring show of love for the Breitenbush watershed, community members blocked the logging road with an impressive slash pile and a repurposed fire truck, and behind the barricade held a day of storytelling, community building, teach-ins, live music and education about the forest at stake. After a confrontation with police, all 50 community members left without arrest, but promised to be back in a not-so symbolic action if the Forest Service moves forward with logging there.

As I have written here, this will not be the first or the last forest defense struggle to happen in Breitenbush. Our forest management agencies suffer from a powerful amnesia and will continue to introduce irresponsible timber sale after timber sale. Thankfully though, our movement does not suffer from the same memory loss. While the Forest Service will keep coming at our forests with chainsaws, forest defenders are building power, growing our networks, and looking to a better future. And thankfully, we need not look so far.

For thousands of years the indigenous peoples of Cascadia lived in harmony with fire, often partnering with it in cultural burning practices used across the landscape. These practices are being reclaimed by tribes like the Karuk in Northern California as a way to bring fire back where it belongs and reduce the severity of fire in places that have a history of industrial mismanagement.

We can also take leadership from indigenous land defenders working to rematriate land occupied by timber companies. Against most odds, the Mapuche people in Peru are waging an incredible asymmetric battle to kick Big Timber off their ancestral lands. They are setting logging machinery on fire and then working with fire to remove young homogenous timber plantations and initiate a process of ecosystem recovery and life-affirming land management. The Unis’tot’en in northern British Columbia have held off the construction of a network of fossil fuel pipelines through their traditional lands by occupying their historic forests and blockading the way with gardens, youth centers and homes for their people.

xamples are part of our path forward. They’re what we should remember when things feel intractable and hopeless. They are what I hold in my heart as I stand in front of the machinery of destruction.

Right now, some of the last remaining 3% of native, old growth forests are being targeted for post-fire logging. Forest defenders are mobilizing to oppose the logging planned in Breitenbush and plan to do everything we can to protect what’s left. But if we’re going to win, we need more of us. So join us in the Breitenbush watershed, or fight where you stand. BUT PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF IT ALL, FIGHT.

Fuck Your Land Acknowledgements! A Guide to Avoiding Performative Passivism

Hazel Alexis — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 00:00:00 -0700

Hey, you! You realize you’re on stolen land, right? Who am I kidding, of course you do. But, how do you feel about that? Seriously! How does it feel to live on stolen land? Are you uncomfortable? I encourage you to think about these questions and keep thinking about them until you die.

If you’ve spent much time around the University of Oregon, you’ve certainly heard that it’s “located on Kalapuya Ilihi, the traditional indigenous homeland of the Kalapuya people,” who were dispossessed of this land in the 1850s, forcibly removed to the coast, and whose descendants “continue to make important contributions in their communities, at UO, across the land we now refer to as Oregon, and around the world.”

This is the gist of the official land acknowledgement provided by the university, a paragraph of performative platitudes that’s proliferated through the institution like a plague and can now be found on plaques, in conference powerpoints, at administrative meetings, in class slides and even, unfortunately, on materials produced by so called leftists who really ought to know better.

“Hold on a second!” you may be thinking, “Isn’t it a good thing to acknowledge that we’re on native land?” I wouldn’t blame you if you thought this, because you’d be right… sort of. It is good for people to know they’re on native land, and to know the local history. But knowledge is just the first step—no, not even that, it’s the zeroeth step; in the fight for decolonization, land back and sovereignty, colonizers knowing that they are colonizers accomplishes next to nothing. Words are not land, I cannot build a home on a plaque, nor can I grow crops in your open mind.

But let’s give these white people the benefit of the doubt, and assume the intention is to educate people about historical injustices so they’ll decide on their own to become active allies to indigenous people—all the land acknowledgement is doing is giving them a little push! Unfortunately, this doesn’t check out. When was the last time you learned something from a land acknowledgement? What was it? What have you done differently in your life since then? If you had tangible answers to all three of those questions, I’m impressed. You’re a good liar.

The thing is, nearly every land acknowledgement plays it safe. They use weak, distancing language like “ancestral homelands”, “unceded territory”, “traditional caretakers”, “forcibly relocated”. They never go into much detail, rarely stretching more than a paragraph and almost never topping three (the few I found in my research that were longer were exclusively on the websites of native tribes). They shy away from words like “stolen”, “genocide”, “illegal occupation”. And they, across the board, fail to suggest that anything ought to be done about the situation. The boldest of land acknowledgements amount to “we really shouldn’t be here, but oh well.”

To learn something worth knowing from a land acknowledgement, you would have to know essentially nothing about indigenous history. This is actually a possible achievement, given how poorly our education system treats these issues, but even from a blank slate you won’t learn much. And once you’ve seen or heard the land acknowledgment once, you won’t learn anything from seeing the same exact words again.

So why are these form-letter land acknowledgements so ubiquitous? TO understand this we must accept that their main purpose isn’t to educate—if it were they would be more detailed, more varied, give new information each time. Hell, nowhere on the UO website is there even a link to more information about the Kalapuya people, the forced relocation, the formation of the tribes of Grand Ronde and Siletz, or the current contributions of these people. There’s not even any sources cited in the land acknowledgement!! We’re supposed to take them at face value, and we’re not supposed (nor expected) to be curious.

Land acknowledgements are as popular as they are for one reason: virtue signalling. They’re an easy way to look woke and perform allyship without taking any risks or doing any labor. Hell, you don’t even need to write it yourself; there’s countless websites that will suggest a general formula for you to plug in whatever names you get from native-land.ca, or you could just use the UO land acknowledgement—everyone else does, after all.

Every time I hear a land acknowledgement, I think, “so what?” Okay, you’ve acknowledged that you’re on stolen land, that bad things happened; what are you going to do about it? Most of the time, the answer is fuck all. The CBC Baroness von Sketch Show has an excellent land acknowledgement comedy sketch which can be found on Youtube and resonates for many indigenous people: after a land acknowledgement in a theatre, an audience member asks “should we leave, then?” The comedy comes from the universally recognized fact that land acknowledgments are not to be engaged with, nor to be taken seriously. They’re to be hurried through so we can get on with whatever we’re really here for.

And this too often is how the people or institutions upholding the practice view it. They do land acknowledgements because it’s the done thing (and gosh, what if people noticed we weren’t doing them? they might think we’re racist!), and they don’t do anything more, partly because they see the land acknowledgement itself as sufficient, and partly because they wouldn’t even know where to begin (it’s a generally accepted truth in the field of Being A Minority that performative “allies” don’t quite understand google).

So where does this leave us? The status quo is tame, formulaic, largely meaningless “land acknowledgements”, delivered hurriedly and awkwardly, mispronunciations mumbled through, to an eyes-glazed-over, impatient, distracted audience. There is no call to action, there is no accountability, there is no room for discussion or further learning. Normalizing this is actively harmful; it gets in the way of real activism, but the practice of uneducated white people teaching other uneducated white people these simplified histories can also perpetuate harmful ideas about indigenous people. In recognition of this danger, the Association of Indigenous Anthropologists has actually recommended a hiatus on land acknowledgements until more research on their efficacy can be conducted.

My biggest issue with land acknowledgements is that the very practice of doing them seems to imply they accomplish something, but they really do not. The idea that they accomplish something is tied up in what Yellowknives Dene First Nation scholar Glen Coulthard names the “politics of recognition”—a colonially imposed framework in which indigenous people benefit from recognition by the settler state and its agents. This framework must be rejected wholesale. So called allies do us no favors by recognizing, ratifying or legitimizing our existence, struggles or accomplishments. Doing so is rather the bare minimum of rejecting indigenous erasure.

“That’s all well and good”, you may be thinking, “but surely a land acknowledgement is better than nothing?” To which I respond, WHY THE FUCK IS THE ALTERNATIVE NOTHING??? Why is the choice between ignoring indigenous people altogether and tokenizing our histories for brownie points? Why do I even need to see “on stolen kalapuya land” in email signatures and twitter bios and instagram captions and zines? It’s downright offensive; do better!

I want to end his article here, but I am worried that if I don’t explicate how to do better, that will become an excuse for not changing. There’s countless perspectives and words of wisdom available at the other side of a google search, but I did promise a guide, so here’s five things you can do instead of a land acknowledgement, to actually support indigenous people and decolonization:

Educate yourself about the colonial history and present conditions of the indigenous inhabitants of your area, and talk to people about what you find out. How many times have you heard or said the word “kalapuya” without knowing any details about who that word refers to? Do you even know where Siletz and Grand Ronde are? Do you know about issues currently facing Oregon’s tribes? If you answered no to any of these questions, these are some good jumping off points for your research.
Talk to indigenous people in your community and make space for native voices and perspectives in your organizing. If there’s no native folks in the room, ask yourself why. It’s not because we don’t exist, but it might be because your organization’s rhetoric is reinforcing colonial ideology—I’m looking at you, class reductionists who minimize racial and national divisions and “public land” loving environmentalists.
Donate to indigenous communities and support decolonial activism. At any moment, there are countless indigenous people on the front lines of the battle against capitalism and colonialism, defending land, protecting water, seeking justice for missing and murdered indigenous women, and serving their communities. These all cost money, and one of the most obvious things that you, as a person who has materially benefited from colonization, can do to make amends with the people who have materially suffered is GIVE US YOUR MONEY. This can be a great option for an organization that typically opens meetings with a land acknowledgement—start by sharing a venmo for a bail fund or an advocacy group instead, and talking about the issue. Just make sure that the money is actually going to indigenous people.
Use your privilege by putting your white body on the line where it matters. As my friend Leon writes elsewhere in this issue, the only way to slow global warming is to actively intervene, and native folks have been doing this, while simultaneously protecting our homelands from colonization, for decades. It’s dangerous though, and many have died on the front lines of this struggle. There’s never zero risk, but white folks can weaponize their privilege for the cause by actively participating in clashes with police. White people are less likely to be killed, more likely to be released if arrested and generally will receive lighter sentences if they are convicted of a crime. Thus, they make great allies when they show up and listen to indigenous leadership.
Give land back. This isn’t something everyone can do; not everyone has land. But if you do, or you work with an organization or agency that deals with “public” lands, or has land in trust, you can and should advocate for that land to be returned to indigenous folks. If “land back” is a scary concept for you, or you don’t quite understand it, I encourage you to do your research. There can be no reconciliation when native people are still dispossessed of our land.

Grants Pass High School Protest: Student Response

Azzi Lescio — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 00:00:00 -0700

Mass student walkout protests rehiring of transphobic teachers

On Tuesday, November 16th, around 300 students at Grants Pass High School participated in a walkout protesting the school board’s decision to reinstate two transphobic educators who were fired in July. Media coverage up to this point has focused unduly on the actions of a few counter protesters and largely ignored student voices. The following article, which was written in collaboration with GPHS students, is published to counteract this. On March 25th, 2021, two staff members at North Middle School, assistant principal Rachel Damiano and science teacher Katie Medart, released a video launching what they called the “I Resolve” movement. It proposes policy changes that would define sex as binary, force trans students to use “anatomically-correct” bathrooms and changing rooms, require parental approval for staff to use their correct name and pronouns, and even then allow teachers to refuse if they didn’t feel like it. If implemented, these policies would put many students in a position where their names and pronouns are not respected, out some students to others when they aren’t ready, and put LGBTQ+ youth in dangerous situations. The “resolutions” proposed by Medart and Damiano are directly harmful to LGBTQ+ students, especially those who are trans and non-binary. The video’s release was met by shock, anger and mobilization by allies in the Grants Pass community. Parents, educators, students and community members formed a coalition called “I Affirm” to counteract the pain caused by the I Resolve movement and stand in solidarity with LGBTQ+ students by hosting rallies and meeting with students to help them organize further action. The group and the larger community also voiced their concerns about Damiano and Medart in letters and phone calls to the district. In response, the Grants Pass School District board launched an investigation into Damiano and Medart, culminating on July 15th in a 4-3 vote in favor of firing them for improper use of school time and resources. Celebrations were short lived, however, because on November 9th, they were both reinstated after a board member switched his vote. This decision was like a slap in the face to LGBTQ+ students. Saul Christensen, a transgender freshman at GPHS, was appalled. “When I heard about the reinstatement of Katie and Rachel it was like a huge punch in the gut. My friends, I, and other community members had worked so hard for months to just get the school board to consider firing them. It was so sudden too. We didn’t really have any time to stop them or react beforehand.” Saul was joined in his frustration by many students across campus, including senior Evan Tucker. “When I heard how Mr. Kuhlman voted, I was not surprised; but I was still angry. I had a feeling it was going to go this way from the pressure put on him from his church, and from the big smiles on Damanio and Medart’s faces as they came out of the executive session. I was just met with so much disappointment. They had let the student body down, and we knew there was something we had to do about it.” What they would do about it was decided the next day at a Pride Club meeting, where Evan collaborated with Deenie Bulyalert, a junior and the president of Pride Club, to plan a student walkout in protest of the reinstatement. They distributed hundreds of flyers calling on students to support their LGBTQ+ peers. “If they will not give us a voice, then we will fight for one”, the flyers proclaimed, and encouraged wearing purple to show support. “From there, things took off”, said Evan. “Our message of protest spread quickly and sparked additional protests at South Medford High School, South Middle School, and North Middle School, where Damiano and Medart had previously worked.” Students at the Gladiola High School campus in Grants Pass also walked out in support. On the day of the protest, spirits were high. Hundreds of students gathered in front of the school, along with dozens of supportive parents and allies in the community. Saul was pleasantly surprised by the turnout. “Seeing so many people at the protest was crazy, and not what I was expecting at all. It actually made me a little emotional, but I’m sure a lot of other people felt the same way. When I was walking through the hallways I could spot so many people wearing purple. I know that a lot of other people and allies participated in the walk out with knowledge they could easily be punished by their parents for it. So many people standing up for my community was really empowering, and I bet it was really shocking for the people against our cause too. They thought it would only be a small group of people, as did we, but I think it just goes to show how tightly knit we as youth are.” Unfortunately, two adults from a local religious extremist group showed up to counterprotest. Evan was unsurprised. “While I was happy to see so many students coming outside, I was nervous seeing students unknowingly putting themselves at risk to the right-wing extremist group “Salt Shakers;” who would inevitably show up.” The RV Saltshakers, as they call themselves, can be found around Southern Oregon and even in Eugene on the UO campus, with inflammatory signs; one reads, “OUR LIES, HATE, THEFT, GREED, LUST, PORN, FORNICATION, LGBTQ, ABORTION, AND ALL OTHER SIN EARN DEATH AND HELL. TRUST JESUS! BE SAVED!”; others have graphic, exaggerated depictions of aborted fetuses. They are generally disliked by everyone they interact with, and tend to be the type of people to go out of their way to harass high schoolers. Saul has a theory for why the students were met with such hate. “I think that transphobes, older ones especially, see the sense of love and familial connection we have for one another and think, ‘Why am I not treated this way?’ That questioning of themself and the things they think they’re assured with then turns into a sort of jealousy. It brings on the kind of mentality that’s like, ‘If I can’t be happy with myself, then nobody can.’ The anger they feel also comes from how in tune we are with ourselves as trans people. We have a sort of connection with our own feelings that is so unique, and cisgender see that and feel envious from not being able to express their individuality in the same way we do. It’s a mean cycle of doubt, turned into resentment, turned into obsessive rage.” The walkout was planned to end at 2:07pm when the bell rang for students to head back to 7th period, and at that time most students returned to class. Around that time, there were clashes between the adult salt shakers and students who stayed behind. The cops eventually got involved and arrested three teenagers: two GPHS students and a supporting community member. A student, who asked to stay anonymous, touched on these events. “It is obviously not a secret that cops were at the protest and that some individuals got arrested. It frustrates me how the situation was handled because instead of making the counter-protesters leave, people who were instigating emotion and actions done by some students, the cops just stood there and did nothing. No action was taken by a cop until one minor inconvenience took place where a student or individual on the side of the LGBTQ+ students did something. It disheartened me that I was further dug into my idea that cops don’t respect us, and it frustrated me even more reading the news report that was released where an individual who was arrested was misgendered multiple times. “I feel like I spent so long trying to give authority the benefit of the doubt, trying to understand where they are coming from, but watching your friends cry and feeling their pain, watching a protest that was meant to be peaceful get drowned because adults who are supposed to have your back didn’t want to do anything and instead went against you, felt like another piece of my childhood got taken away from me. Us students already had to acknowledge that the school board is not on our side due to the reinstatement, now we truly know that our whole community is against us during a time that we need the support the most.” Despite the antagonism the students were met with, Saul was optimistic. “I’ve learned to not try to change the way people think, because above all else their stubbornness will stay with them until they’re on their deathbed and can’t remember anything else besides how they feel about people who are completely detached from society’s ‘normal’ lifestyle. I don’t think that hate like that can be reversed, but if I can be a part of encouraging others to be wholly themselves, that’s a reward that’s unique to everything else I’ve personally accomplished.” Evan also felt the walkout was a success. “I know students felt heard, and that they mattered. It was powerful seeing so many people fight for what was right.” This feeling was shared by most students who participated, and plans are already underway for next steps. “This isn’t the last time that students are going to fight for our voices,” says Deenie. “We have been quiet and silenced for too long, we are tired and we are not backing down without a fight. There are potential events that will take place at some point to stand in solidarity with LGBTQ+ youth. Students will continue to gather to talk about ways to make the schools safer for future and current students. Schools are institutions that kids are required to go to; whether or not we have to fight for the things we need, we will continue to pave our way through to create an environment that students truly want to be in.” Students are asking for two kinds of support. First, people who want to support can email the school board members, to thank the ones who voted against reinstating Damiano and Medart (in bold below), and explain to those who voted for reinstatement the harmful impact that neglecting to follow school policy and not listening to the voices of students has in the district. Scott Nelson - outhousedoc@gmail.com Debbie Brownell - dbrownell@grantspass.k12.or.us Brian DeLaGrange - bdelagrange@grantspass.k12.or.us Gary Richardson - glrichardson@grantspass.k12.or.us Cassie Wilkins - cwilkins@grantspass.k12.or.us Todd Neville - tneville@grantspass.k12.or.us Cliff Kuhlman - ckuhlman@grantspass.k12.or.us Second, funds are being raised to help cover legal fees for students being charged with crimes for participating in the protest and bail money for the arrested community member. Donations should be made to @siskiyoumutualaid on Venmo, with the note “GPHS Solidarity”.

Inaccessible Accessibility

Aisling — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 00:00:00 -0700

You know what? College is hard— shocking, I know. Everyone has something that adds to the burden of learning what we need to know for our future, be it work, family emergencies, or visa troubles, everyone’s burden is heavy and should be treated as such. Nobody deserves to struggle on the way from point A to point B. So why is my college pulling me back by the ankle even though it asks me if I need a hand?

Everyone has a right to an education. At least that’s how it should be; how this country likes to talk about it. The University of Oregon, and honestly our society as a whole, spins diversity as a boon and does the least they could possibly do to uphold their self praise. And I do mean the very least they could do, disabled people are so used to being overlooked and forgotten that you would think that this wouldn’t be anything new but somehow the University of Oregon campus has found ways to shock me everyday.

The front doors of many buildings that are seemingly accessible by wheelchair do not have buttons to open them. This forces people to wonder which side of the building they should try first to just get into the building before having to figure out how to then get to their classroom. For me this means the choice of hurting myself opening the door by hand or hurting myself walking around the building. Why must those of us who already have trouble with mobility continuously be asked to, quite literally, go the extra mile?

Buttons to open doors are often blocked by architecture, both permanent and temporary, and are inaccessible to wheelchair users and everybody else who might use them. The example that irks me the most is when a trash can is placed in front of one; I must either stop using my cane to free up my hand or put my cane in the trash to open a fucking door. Between this and the fact that many accessibility ramps are at the back of buildings with the dumpsters sends a clear message. I know many people see disabled people as disposable but I’ve never experienced it quite so literally before.

On top of buttons being blocked, the University of Oregon has changed them from the classic and very visible bright blue to a stainless steel and many of them have been made smaller to camouflage them against the decor. I guess visible disability accessibility ruins the aesthetic that the college is going for in its new buildings.

And if we want to talk about literally making it from point A to point B, campus sidewalks are uneven and falling apart. You would think a college as rich, successful, and proud of its diversity as this one would make sure that you could walk without tripping, let alone roll a wheelchair around. Another part of getting from point A to point B comes in the form of wheelchair ramps: you would think that this would be a no-brainer, an easy way to keep the stairs college architects love so much. But I continuously find them located out of the way, with sharp turns that are hard on wheelchair users, or used as a parking spot for those tiny campus staff carts.

The ramp for Lawrence Hall closest to the bus stops is used by many off campus students to get to class; it is not only led up to by a steep, broken sidewalk but is steep itself and made out of gravel— a slipping hazard for abled students and a complete blockage for disabled ones.

Once you are in the buildings, you are no better off. Elevators constantly break, are out of the way or hidden, require attendants to operate, make worrying sounds, or just plain don’t exist. Entire buildings are inaccessible. Buildings that hold classes, dorms, and student support structures are completely blocked off from those of us who can’t make our way up stairs. If a disabled student can’t make it to their class, it is up to THEM to 1) schedule an appointment with AEC (the Accessible Education Center) to set up a classroom switch, a challenge because it can take weeks to get an appointment, 2) shuffle paperwork between AEC and their doctor to make sure they have the specific wording that is needed for their accommodations, and 3) find a new classroom for the class. They must do this all while trying not to fall behind in the class they can’t even reach, taking their other classes, and handling all their other responsibilities and difficulties.

All this comes together to create a picture of a campus that is not only inaccessible but insultingly so. The ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) has been around since 1990. That’s 31 years since people decided that maybe companies and campuses couldn’t be trusted to do the bare minimum and needed regulation to push them to be inclusive in more than just words. And yet the University of Oregon has somehow just…not done that. And that’s not even taking into account that the ADA isn’t enough— it should be a foundation to build off of, a starting point, yet the University of Oregon seems to think it’s the whole building. When I see their subpar efforts to placate the law, all I see is an awareness of their duties to their students and their lack of desire to fulfill them.

The very college I attend should not be yet another roadblock I must contend with to get my education. I have more than enough of those already. If they don’t want me here, I wish they at least had the courage to tell me to my face, because these tripping hazards–both literal and metaphorical–are growing tedious. It’s way past time we tear them down and build up a system that actually meets our needs and doesn’t just put up a facade of inclusivity.

We need a large-scale overhaul of public campus spaces to increase access around and within buildings quickly, easily, and practically. We need more trained professionals in AEC and other departments who know the school system they work within to ensure everyone gets the help they need when they need it. Students need to be made aware of the services that are available to them. The University must start going beyond the requirements of the law to meet the needs of their students.

Everyone has a right to an education. It’s 2021, it’s time to make that true in practice, not just theory.

Living and Fighting: Atlanta Activists Show Eugene How it's Done

J. Ellis — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 00:00:00 -0700

Not so long ago Eugene, Oregon was the hotbed of the green anarchy movement: a reputation that resulted in feds kicking doors down in the Whiteaker and the Chicago Tribune declaring this small university town the “cradle to [the] latest generation of anarchist protestors,” at the dawn of the 21st century. But let’s face it, Eugene’s scene has taken a hit from the pandemic and fragmented leftist disunity.

Its glory days are long over; many organizations have struggled with loss of membership and participation as Eugene’s radical rep fades to memory.

But hark! There is hope yet.

Eugene’s radical pulse has recently attracted a small pilgrimage of Atlanta activists, here to check out the state of the scene in a place that once defined green anarchy.

On Friday night, November 5, the Neighborhood Anarchist Collective sponsored a presentation called “Living and Fighting: The last ten years of autonomous struggle in Atlanta from Occupy to Defend the Forest,” where a couple of organizers from Atlanta showed Eugene how it’s done in 2021.

The organizers came bearing zines that detail the last decade of anarchist struggle in the region. Next time you’re at a zine swap (or the ROAR center) keep an eye out for At the Wendy’s: Armed Struggle at the End of the World, Don’t Die Wondering: Atlanta Against the Police, and the simple yet effective, How to Start a Fire: an invitation, for exceptional and informative reads about lessons from Atlanta direct actions.

The presentation itself was inspiring, Atlanta knows how to throw down. If you’re an organizer in Eugene, you better have jotted mental notes. While you may associate Eugene with trees sooner than Atlanta, the city actually has the highest percentage of tree canopy of any major metropolitan area in America. As a result, the close proximity of forest to this urban center has massive ramifications for issues of environmental justice. In Dekalb County, the South River Forest was used as the site of a prison labor farm throughout the 20th century. Now, the city’s forest defense community is banding together to prevent Hollywood from clearing this land—now a public park—to build a production studio, and stop the construction of a 300-acre “mock city” designed for police training.

Key to this struggle’s successes is the diversity of participation at these direct actions.

Atlanta’s activist community is composed of an array of tightly interwoven affinity groups that show up in enthusiastic droves for actions. Some standout initiatives highlight the various approaches the ATL scene uses and how they complement each other to foster community solidarity. Projects, initiatives, and groups utilize various facets to engage people in their politics such as: community organizing spaces, community kitchens/gardens, forest festivals, and recreational activities like Bike Life, a collective that gathers to ride BMX bikes in the Atlanta streets/forests while doubling as some of its most staunch defenders.

We can stand to learn a thing or two from these Atlanta forest defenders as they exemplify what effective community outreach and intersectional organizing can look like.

So, Eugene, let’s not waste anymore time. We have no excuse not to employ tactics and strategies proven to be effective elsewhere, so what’s the delay?

What is stopping you or your organization, fellow organizers from throwing a rave in forests scheduled for clearcuts, hosting that benefit show/zine swap in your backyard, or scoping out spots to start up our very own autonomous community and organizing center? Let’s organize with intention and envision the larger goal of nourishing our very own symbiotic mutual aid network. All of the building blocks are already there, and the last few weeks of direct actions and forest defense are a testament to that.

Meaningful networks are waiting to evolve—actualize these networks with a simple “hello, my name is…” maybe followed by “solidarity,” and we might just start to see the mobilization of hundreds of people ready to take a stand for their land and neighbors. Let’s catch up with Atlanta’s momentum.

Keep up to date and learn about Atlanta’s forest defense and other organizing at the link below: linktr.ee/DefendAtlantaForest

Podcast Review: Revolutionary Left Radio

Red Harris — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 00:00:00 -0700

I remember the first episode of Revolutionary Left Radio that I listened to. It was released on May 31, 2020, six days after the murder of George Floyd, entitled “America on Fire.” It is 38 minutes of white- hot revolutionary anger spit like fire from the mouth of Brett O’Shea, the host of the show, who primarily conducts interviews with radicals from a global range of backgrounds and interests, engaged in every struggle being waged by the international left today: from Wobblies in the US to Palestinian activists in the West Bank and Naxalite militants in India.

The episode in question is unique, however, for being one of just a few monologues in the podcast’s catalogue. Instead of the usual interview, Brett takes us along on an impassioned tirade in which no stone is left unturned, lambasting every assumption and principle underpinning the ideologies and institutions which led to the murder of George Floyd and that of countless other BIPOC people in recent years and throughout American history—a history which, as Brett leads us to understand, has always been based on systems of power which fundamentally uphold white supremacy and capitalism (two sides of the same coin). Articulate, compassionate, and atremble with a revolutionary indignation that would make Che Guevara proud, Brett ends this episode’s long diatribe with an appeal that characterizes all his work. He asks that his listeners strive to uphold and live a politics of compassion and care even in the face of reaction and hate. It is a simple and sensible sentiment which, nevertheless, is sometimes forgotten by an embittered and jaded left. The same feeling is echoed throughout even the less overtly political episodes of the podcast, such as those discussing psychedelics, spirituality, philosophy, and ecology. Even when discussing the virtues of meditation or the principles and history of Sufism, there is always an undercurrent of the same compassion and love that makes Revolutionary Left Radio an inspirational joy to listen to. Frequently, the insight and compassion of the radicals that Brett works with on the show are just as moving.

The George Floyd protests in Portland began on May 28. I was there on the first night, when we gathered in Peninsula Park and marched downtown to the Justice Center, where the pigs were out in force, decked out in tactical gear, flashbangs and tear gas at the ready. Over the following days and weeks, as the heat increased in Portland and across the nation in response to the cold calculus of a brutal system (working just as designed) that executes its BIPOC citizens with impunity, I would carry with me in the streets and in my home Brett O’Shea’s appeal to revolutionary love that rung in my ears and resounded in my heart. A year and a half later, it still does.

Podcast Review: YIKES

Fio — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 00:00:00 -0700

I started listening to the YIKES podcast during quarantine when my understanding of environmentalism was a lot less intersectional than it is now. I believed that environmental disasters were the fault of individuals and that it was everyone’s “job” to make individual changes. Particularly, my previous beliefs surrounding environmentalism were white-centered. I thought everyone could go vegan, zero waste, or off-grid if they really wanted to. The YIKES podcast pushed me to evaluate my perspective and is continuing to help me unlearn a lot of the beliefs I had previously held. The YIKES podcast is cohosted by Mikaela Loach and Jo Becker. Loach is a climate activist, medical student, and writer based in Edinburg; Becker is an MS student in Sustainability and Behaviour Change with a focus on societal transformation also based in Edinburg. Loach and Becker met through Instagram and then in real life at the International Rebellion in October of 2019, and have been inseparable ever since. The YIKES podcast that they co-host can be found on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts. An aspect of the podcast I like is its use of accessible language; Loach and Becker make this material more accessible by focusing on education rather than gatekeeping. At the beginning of every podcast, Loach and Becker go over terminology that listeners may not have access to or education about. As a listener, the accessibility of the podcast has helped me a lot to understand these complex and seemingly nuanced topics about environmentalism. Such as overpopulation myths, environmental racism, and how capitalism is intertwined with environmental destruction. For this reason, and many others, The YIKES podcast has helped me understand how environmentalism is connected to all social issues. This podcast has 4 seasons, 41 episodes in total, ranging on topics from system change to ecofascism. It can appeal to multiple audiences because they breach a wide variety of political conversations that many people may experience firsthand, or may have no experience with. Loach and Becker invite outside expertise to appear on the show as guests, and the guests provide accurate information on their fields of expertise. For instance, in episode 10 “Periods, Trans Rights, and Boundaries,” Kenny Ethan Jones was invited to share his experiences as a trans person. He discussed how cis people can advocate for trans people, and shared his Instagram as an educational platform. Guest speakers like Jones not only give listeners a perspective outside of the hosts, but they are more often than not connected to other organizations. Many of the guests are educators, lawyers, therapists, political organizers, and extremely active community members. I’ve learned a lot about political organizations and educational platforms through these guest speakers.

Scratching the Surface of Medical Misogyny

Rosie — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 00:00:00 -0700

The USA… Supposedly the greatest country in the world, has a never ending breadth of crises occurring, many of which are unknown to those who have had the privilege not to have experienced them first hand. Medical Misogyny is a systemic issue that has been rampant in the United States since the dawn of medicine, and continues to affect women (especially women of color) in many different contexts.

One way we see this misogyny commonly manifest is through the menialization of women’s issues in a number of different medical settings, which is incredibly dangerous for women’s health. Women are less likely to be prioritized in an emergency situation and are also less likely to be prescribed pain medication despite conveying the same pain levels as their male counterparts. Not only is this dangerous because it means women are deprioritized in a health crisis, but it also reinforces already negative correlations women and POC may have with medical care and a hospital setting.¹

The USA is still the only industrialized country in the world with a maternal mortality rate that has continued to rise, and we have an infant mortality rate 71% higher than other economically comparable countries.² These rates are also more than double for black women compared to their white counterparts.³ For those with the ability to give birth, we often consider a hospital setting to be the safest place to do so because the media we consume reaffirms paternalistic rhetoric in both the profession and culture at large. Last spring, I read an illuminating article by Robbie E Davis Floyd (an American anthropologist known for her research in obstetrics and childbirth) that reframed the idea of American hospital birth and attempted to answer the question of why our mothers are dying at such high rates in the USA. The answer? Capitalism, of course.

The issue of medical misogyny is one that is deeply rooted in technocratic medicine, capitalism, and let’s not forget the patriarchy. Industrialized medicine is reliant on the technocratic model, for it restricts who is able to practice medical care. Only those with high levels of education and status/privilege are able to join the medical field, and during the rise of industrialized medicine the overwhelming majority of medical practitioners with that level of education and status were heterosexual white men. This meant that the white male perspective became not only the dominating force in medical practice but also the model for medical research.⁴ This model has historically used the white heterosexual male as the basis for all scientific research and advancement, resulting in severe underrepresentation of women and communities of color. Even now in 2021, in order to get into medical school, one must have the financial means as well as the ability to maintain high GPA levels. Access to higher education is elitist in that it is restricted to those who have access to a certain level of privilege thus preventing true diverse representation in the medical field which only further contributes to the misogyny already embedded into the industry.

The technocratic model of medicine, like many other systems of power in the US, is a byproduct of capitalism and the alienation it produces. The model (originally defined by Robbie E. Davis Floyd) hinges on mind-body separation and the idea that the universe is mechanistic, our bodies function as machines and women’s bodies in particular function as _defective _machines made to be fixed with medical technology. The mind-body separation allows for us to subconsciously develop the idea that our bodies are property of an institution, and are reliant on medical intervention for survival. This mind-body separation is the antithesis of the humanistic model typically employed by eastern medicine, wherein the mind and body are considered a holistic organism- treated as a singular entity, especially as it pertains to health and medicine. The mind-body separation and the belief that women’s bodies are inherently defective is the foundation of modern obstetrics and may be culpable for the comparably high maternal mortality rates in the United States.

Medical misogyny and the technocratic model are ideas that make perfect sense to women and POC who have experienced the symptoms of the phenomena firsthand, however many people I have spoken to on the subject who do not fall into those categories are completely oblivious to the blatant horrors that occur within medical facilities, and this is not surprising considering very few doctors face repercussions for their unethical behavior (including sexual assault) and the patients who suffer at their hands are dismissed in lieu of the “authority” figure (AKA the medical professional).⁵ One highly publicized example of this was by osteopathic physician Larry Nassar who sexually assaulted more than 265 young girls during his time as a doctor at USA gymnastics. Nassar went 18 years before finally being caught, which has always especially disturbed me considering we do not know how many other medical professionals there are out there engaging in similar behaviors who will never get caught. The unethical and nightmare inducing practices that have occurred within the medical industry will continue to occur indefinitely as long as the deep patriarchal roots embedded in technocratic medicine are dismantled and reformed.⁶

This simply scratches the surface of the medical inequalities that occur within the US, the atrocities that occur behind the doors of medical facilities are more vast than one could possibly fit into an article. While we strive to make progress at a systemic level, I also personally encourage anyone who has well placed mistrust in the modern American medical system to seek out a holistic approach to their healthcare that incorporates both preventative care and elements of modern medicine. We are indoctrinated by capitalism into thinking that the technocratic form of medicine is the only valid form, that we are dependent on technocratic institutions for survival, when in reality there are plenty of non-western forms of medicine that are equally valid and safer options in many cases. Modern medicine has provided us with many invaluable inventions and discoveries, but access to these discoveries must be universal, not restrictive.

-Rosie

Footnotes & Citations

Weisse, C., Sorum, P., Sanders, K., & Syat, B. (2001, April). Do gender and race affect decisions about pain management? Retrieved November 25, 2021, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1495199/ ↩︎
Cohen, J. (2021, August 01). U.S. maternal and infant mortality: More signs of public health neglect. Retrieved November 25, 2021, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshuacohen/2021/08/01/us-maternal-and-infant-mortality-more-signs-of-public-health-neglect/?sh=4b3d35a83a50 ↩︎
Products - health e stats - maternal mortality rates in the United States, 2019. (2021, March 23). Retrieved November 25, 2021, from https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/maternal-mortality-2021/maternal-mortality-2021.htm ↩︎
Wanted single, White Male for medical research - JSTOR. (n.d.). Retrieved November 25, 2021, from https://www.jstor.org/stable/3562720 ↩︎
AbuDagga, A., Carome, M., & Wolfe, S. (2019, July). Time to end physician sexual abuse of patients: Calling the U.S. medical community to action. Retrieved November 25, 2021, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6614523/ ↩︎
How was Larry Nassar able to abuse so many gymnasts for so long? (2018, January 26). Retrieved November 25, 2021, from https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/jan/26/larry-nassar-abuse-gymnasts-scandal-culture ↩︎

TERFS on Lesbian Turf

Dorian Blue — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 00:00:00 -0700

Art by Toby

Most lesbians are involved with the feminist cause, or at least care about its impacts. Obviously, being a woman and loving other women makes us care about women’s rights. Over time though, I have discovered an unfortunate truth. Some lesbians who on the surface are normal feminists display bitter and violent attacks against trans women, labeling them as men who have “invaded” women’s spaces.

One post I saw on Instagram posed the question: “How do you define women only spaces? Do you think they should exist?” Many of the early comments were benign, talking about how lesbian spaces were important. The ugliness filtered in eventually. I couldn’t stop myself from reading comments bad-mouthing trans women, calling them predators, and going a step further to belittle and attack non-binary people and trans men. I took a look at the profiles that these comments were coming from and never saw a face that looked younger than 30. In their bios, they espoused deep pride in being lesbian, and their profile pictures were endearing to me: grinning grey-haired lesbians wearing plaid. It left me feeling lost. I’d had so many good interactions with these women and their networks. My trans peers wouldn’t have gotten the same positive treatment, and because of this, I felt disturbed. My cisgender privilege was sheltering me from the ugly side of these veteran women’s liberationists.

While the presence of Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERFs) seemed jarring at first, their history is long and storied, especially in queer women’s circles. The first time I heard that term, I hadn’t encountered them before, but it gave me a warning of what was to come. Seeing their rhetoric out in the open is infuriating. The modern rise of TERFdom has been predated by the philosophies of gender essentialism and social constructionism. These terms hold the ideas that people of different sexes have unique characteristics shared across the entire group. A simple summary is a quote such as: “Men are from Mars and women are from Venus.” It proposes that the traits of men and women are inherently different and opposite to each other and it can’t be changed. This thinking was easily translated into the early debates about the validity of trans women, especially in women’s spaces. Because of their perceived connection to masculinity, they were seen as the ultimate threat to feminine power and their place among fellow women was questioned relentlessly. In the queer movements of the later half of the 20th century, they were often treated as tokens, despite all of their work for the community. To this day, they are still relentlessly othered, intentionally or unintentionally.

A high-profile example of trans women being intentionally excluded from a women’s space was at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. Established in 1976 to be an open and safe space for queer women to come together, it thrived for decades and was seen as a cultural fixture. However, in the summer of 1991, a trans woman named Nancy Burkholder was asked to leave. The founder of Michfest, Lisa Vogel, wouldn’t budge, insisting that their policy on transness was “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” and that they would operate under the assumption that everyone was a “womyn born womyn.” In effect, they were creating another gender and class hierarchy. It says a lot that policies in a feminist lesbian space resembled that of the very systems they swore to fight against. “When lesbian feminism starts constraining women instead of liberating them, we have lost our way. This is what the success of years of lesbian visibility activism looks like: new kinds of dykes we haven’t seen before and can’t name yet.” said Riki Wilchins, a trans woman who was also ejected from the festival after her participation in Camp Trans, a protest held across the street from Michfest after the ejection of Burkholder. For years, festival goers and the wider community pleaded with the organizers to change their ways, all to no avail. Despite what Vogel and her allies said, a majority of attendees were always in support of trans people. Following the continued controversy, organizations and musicians dropped their support, such as the Human Rights Campaign and the Indigo Girls.

For decades, a vocal minority of lesbians have caused immeasurable harm to the trans community. In their own twisted pursuit of radical “feminism,” they persecute the people most in danger in today’s society. Since they see trans women as men, they project the trauma they have faced from men onto them, completely ignoring the amount of trans women who are victims themselves. Cis lesbians need to acknowledge what is happening in their spaces and use their privilege to call it out, because transphobia on any level is unacceptable. TERF rhetoric tears apart queer women’s spaces. If we want to expand spaces for queer women, we have to become radically inclusive now.

The French Dispatch: Review

David Patrick Schranck Jr. — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 00:00:00 -0700

Wes Anderson debuted his tenth feature-length film, The French Dispatch, at the Cannes Film Festival in July before it was released theatrically on Oct. 22nd. The COVID-19 pandemic forced the picture’s release to be pushed back by a year, and it was certainly worth the wait. The film, written and directed by Anderson, is an anthology of short vignettes, each of which focuses on a different reporter’s story for the eponymous French foreign bureau of the fictitious Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun newspaper as the last issue is prepared. This motion picture has an all-star ensemble cast including Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Frances McDormand, Timothée Chalamet, Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, Benicio del Toro, Willem Dafoe, Jeffrey Wright, and Edward Norton among others.

The French Dispatch is the culmination of the best aspects of Anderson’s works distilled into a unique and satisfying format. The acting, direction, writing, production design, and cinematography are all excellent and each is distinctively Andersonian. The performances of the ensemble combined with Anderson’s screenplay are quirky, dryly comedic, and witty. The production design throughout is exquisite and charming, reflecting the attention to detail that defines the director’s works. The film is able to seamlessly switch from color to black and white photography throughout and integrate both 2D animation and stop-motion animation. The shot composition and character blocking are carefully planned, making for many shots throughout with some absolutely gorgeous mise-en-scène. Each of the segments is engaging and they provide an interesting variety that still feels cohesive. Suffice to say, Anderson definitely hits all of his marks with this picture.

Also worth mentioning is that I noticed some intriguing parallels between the film and the “behind the scenes” work of our very own Insurgent newspaper. The publication in the picture is not unabashedly radical like we are. However, the writers and editor portrayed in _The French Dispatch _felt very familiar to me. One story in the film features Tilda Swinton portraying an art critic named J.K.L. Berensen who gives a lecture about an incarcerated artist named Moses Rosenthaler, played by Benicio del Toro, reminding me of our prisoner contributions. Another focuses on a writer named Lucinda Krementz, played by Frances McDormand, who reports on a student protest movement, led by Timothée Chalamet’s character Zefferelli, that was inspired by the 1968 student protests in France. This of course called to mind our consistent coverage of student activism. Bill Murray’s character, Arthur Howitzer Jr., who is the editor of the publication, is particularly reminiscent of our former editor and current manager, Eric Howanietz, in the character’s general demeanor, his dedication to his publication, and his great care and advocacy for his writers. In actuality, Anderson took a lot of inspiration for his motion picture, that serves as a tribute to journalism, from The New Yorker. Overall, the manner in which the film showed how a publication comes together every issue rang true to me, which added a deeper layer of appreciation and sentimentality.

Some last points I wanted to focus on: Jeffrey Wright’s segment, where he plays a food writer loosely based on James Baldwin and journalist A.J. Liebling, includes an extended animated sequence that is so great and really enhanced the story. Additionally, the brief section at the beginning with Owen Wilson as a bicycle-riding travel writer named Herbsaint Sazearac was one of the funniest parts of the film. I wish this segment had been longer because I would’ve loved to have seen more from this character. But, the length did feel fitting within the larger context of the feature.

With The French Dispatch, Wes Anderson has made what I see as his most markedly Wes Anderson picture yet. It seems as if he has been able to carefully hone his skills over the decades in order to get to this point where he has mastered the best and most unique qualities of his work. Those who are already fans of Anderson will likely have the most appreciation for his latest project. But, I think many who are unfamiliar with his filmography will still find this film to be quite enjoyable. I might even go as far as to say that _The French Dispatch _may very well be my favorite picture from Wes Anderson that I’ve seen. It’s certainly one of my favorite films of 2021 so far. I hope that the early Oscar buzz that it has received will translate into some well-deserved nominations. With that, I give the film a rating of five stars out of five. You can see it now playing at the Broadway Metro theater in Downtown Eugene and the Cinemark theater in Springfield. Catch it while you still can, because it won’t be in theaters for much longer!

The Power of Positive Thinking... and How It’s Killing Us All

lgo — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 00:00:00 -0700

We’ve all heard of COPs— no, not the ones we are trying to get off campus, but the annual intergovernmental meetings held to discuss what exactly we are going to do about capitalism killing our planet. Every year it seems like climate change is at the top of the list for the United Nations and other government coalitions to tackle, and yet, every year we hear alarm bells from climate scientists warning that death is imminent. In fact, this is the 26th fucking year that the Conference of Parties has met! What are they doing there? Is it just an office party for world leaders? This year’s conference in Italy was a vacation paid for by us poor S.O.B.s considered citizens.

All 196 government leaders involved in the Paris Climate Agreement promise to keep warming levels below 1.5 degrees Celsius. For context, this means that on extremely hot summer days the temperature increase will be about 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit (that Postal Service song was right when they said we will be able to swim any day in November). Maybe your high school environmental studies class warned you about climate change and the increase of catastrophic disasters, but not about the intentional incompetence of rich people smiling in suits.

Here’s what the UN has to say about COP26:

“The UN chief added that it is time to go ‘into emergency mode,’ ending fossil fuel subsidies, phasing out coal, putting a price on carbon, protecting vulnerable communities, and delivering the $100 billion climate finance commitment. ‘We did not achieve these goals at this conference. But we have some building blocks for progress,’ he said.”

What? You accomplished exactly zero of your goals? The conservative goals that even if achieved would not stop the 1.5 C degrees of warming? They’re clowning on us with their political stunts, private jets, and promises to “go green.” Greta Thunberg was right to say COP26 was a “failure” and “greenwashing.” Days after COP26, our very own colonizer king set out to hold the largest offshore drilling auction ever. Biden is selling “public land” for pennies on the dollar by approving hundreds of permits every month and reducing fees for most companies who ask. Public land should be under the stewardship of Indigenous people. It does not belong to lumber, not to fossil fuel companies, and is certainly not for sale. Money will not save you from environmental disaster.

Climate change is a collective action problem. If you’re a granola girl bringing your reusable cup into my 8am, I see you granola girl— but it’s not enough. No matter how many college students start thrifting or participate in tree planting gimmicks, it has yet to stop the military’s disgusting waste of resources totaling 93% of the United States’ energy consumption. The United States military is the largest consumer of fossil fuels in the world. Not only are they murdering people here and abroad, but they are also forcing me to buy an air conditioner and a gas mask.

Now that your climate anxiety is at an all-time high, it’s time to learn how to protect yourself and the world from corporate greed, neoliberalism, and apathy. There is nothing standing between the forest and the loggers, between us and climate disaster, except for warm bodies. The liberal lie is that if we ask nicely, protest nonviolently, vote regularly, the death march of capitalism will stop. The industrial machine is chewing up and spitting out Indigenous people on the front lines. While people are voting instead of rioting, the death march marches on. The insulating forces of whiteness, money, and respectability will not last.

Some people are given a license to murder, to steal, to destroy other people’s property. Do not wait for legitimacy: you will never get it and that’s how this game is designed. Injustice continues while we push reforms or plead for the prison and political systems to work. When we accept that no one is coming to save us, we accept personal responsibility. Do not sign a petition and hope that someone will take notice. Build international community, disrupt business as usual, organize, arm.

Vigil Commemorates Trans & Genderqueer Lives Lost in 2021

Silas Radev — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 00:00:00 -0700

Art by Forest

International Transgender Day of Remembrance is commemorated annually on November 20th. The day was founded to draw attentionday was founded to draw attention to the ceaseless violence endured byto the ceaseless violence endured by trans and genderqueer communities.

On Saturday, November 20th a memorial vigil was held at Unitarianmemorial vigil was held at Unitarian Universalist Church in Eugene. The vigil was put on by TransPonder,vigil was put on by TransPonder, a small grassroots organizationa small grassroots organization founded entirely by trans people andfounded entirely by trans people and based here in Eugene. TransPonder worked in association with theworked in association with the LGBTESS organization here on campus. The ceremony included a reading of names ritual, a statementreading of names ritual, a statement from the Mayor Lucy Vinis, and afrom the Mayor Lucy Vinis, and a keynote address from Transponder Executive Director Kyle Rodriguez-Hudson.

In the entrance of the church, there were two tables full of colorful, unlit candles. Above the stage, pictures were posted on a memorial wall, showing 61 photographs of exuberant, beautiful human beings lost in the past year due to transphobic and hate-related violence.

Participants of the ceremony were invited to light a candle, write down a thought or prayer, and set them on the altar. The vigil was a welcoming and somber setting that gave everyone space to be emotionally vulnerable.

A haiku was written and shared for each individual pictured on the commemoration wall. The poems were about who they were, who loved them, what impacts they have had, and why they will be forever missed. The vigil served as a space to recognize and celebrate the lives of queer family that had been taken too soon. It was a space full of community grief, vulnerability, storytelling, and resilience. In 2021, over 360 trans and gender nonconforming lives were lost due to gender-related violence. The queer community has lost 360 family members and they will not be forgotten.

Who Put Julius Jones Where He Is Today

Trey Kodman — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 00:00:00 -0700

OKLAHOMA CITY- On November 18th, 2021, Julius Jones was scheduled for execution by lethal injection in Oklahoma for the crime of murdering Paul Howell in 1999, only recently contested by conflicting information from other inmates associated with the alleged accomplice. With only a few hours remaining, Governor Kevin Stitt granted clemency for Jones with no possibility of commutation, pardon, or parole.

Christopher Jordan (Photo of Christopher Jordan is courtesy of Oklahoma Department of Corrections), the alleged accomplice, was once a teenager in the suburb city of Edmond, OK. But after the 1999 murder of Paul in the driveway at the Howell family residence, Jordan had other plans than being accountable for his role in that crime during the 2002 murder trial. His plea deal with the state testifying against Jones, claiming that is who shot Howell, allowed him to be released from prison by 2014 while Jones stayed on death row awaiting execution. But before Jordan’s release from prison, he had revealed crucial information about his trial and lying while playing basketball and being remorseful with his fellow inmates during his sentence.

One cellmate of Jordan’s, Roderick Wesley, had internal conflict compel him to write a letter to Jones’ attorney, Amanda Bass, in July 2020. Wesley wrote that Jordan had confessed to him between summer and fall in 2009, “my co-defendant is on death row behind a murder I committed.”

Wesley (Roderick Wesley mugshot is courtesy of Arkansas Department of Corrections) continued in the letter to Bass, “If this man is wrongfully executed by continuing to conceal this information, I feel as if I would have had a hand in putting this man to death, and I can’t live with that on my conscience.” After Wesley had watched a documentary, The Last Defense, he sympathized once seeing the Jones family's turmoil. Jones' defense team was elated yet challenged by this new information.

Jones’ appeals have occurred on death row for decades with no success, yet he has always maintained his innocence before them. But this clemency petition also cited statements from three different people who shared incarceration with Jordan. All three men said Jordan had separately confessed to them that he had killed Howell and framed Jones. This information influenced athletes and celebrities like Kim Kardashian, Baker Mayfield, Dak Prescott, and Russell Westbrook to call on public support to have Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter allow the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board to hear Jones’ commutation request. Along with the expanding use of the pardon and parole board’s authority, under Stitt’s guidance, they approved commutations for about 500 prison inmates in 2019. This use of an integral part of the corrections system was non-existent in years prior.

Today, Jones can hug his mother for the first time after 22 years now that he is no longer incarcerated on death row. Lacking Howell’s mother hugging her son, at least now a possibly framed man, and his testimony isn’t going to the grave allowing the real murderer to walk free. But even with Jones stuck with no chance of escaping life in prison, it is the state that owns the responsibility of the murder, and this clemency approval proves that.

Worth More Standing: UO Students Join Forest Defenders To Rise Against Post-Fire Logging

Topaz — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 00:00:00 -0700

Have you ever stopped in the shade of a towering tree, and just looked up? Have you ever felt a mystical tug to give a tree a hug? Have you ever soaked up their love? No way, same! But even if you’re totally not that type… trees love you anyway. They maintain ecosystem resilience against escalated threats and buffer the world against climate change, providing us living things with continued breathable air, drinkable water, and livable land. Forests also feature in all aspects of human culture: language, history, art, religion, medicine, politics, and even social structure itself. Our sense of being rooted in community is learned from trees, as well as our sense of grounded emotional well-being.

So wrap your arms around a tree— there’s a moment of serenity and reverence waiting at every Douglas Fir, Western Red Cedar, Hemlock, Big Leaf Maple, Alder, Pine, and Yew.

All of these species, plus countless more were observed to be alive and thriving by forest defenders in the post-wildfire ecosystem of the Breitenbush watershed, located between Portland and Eugene in the Willamette National Forest. This area has been the site of the Highway 46 project since 2019, which involves thinning and logging to make way for development on privately owned forest land— which is actually land stolen by settlers from Indigenous peoples, many of whose descendants are now members of the Confederated Tribes of the Grande Ronde, Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, and Klamath Tribes. No timber sales on stolen land!

The Highway 46 project is being challenged by environmental groups including the Cascadia Forest Defenders in a lawsuit after the Forest Service changed the logging agreement to remove more timber than had originally been proposed. These modifications came following the 2020 Labor Day fires that swept through the area, fueled by gusting, unpredictable winds, drought, and scorching heat as a result of manmade climate change. Salvage loggers and their allies at the American Forest Resource

Council claim that burned forests are choked with dead and dying trees, which will fuel future wildfires, reduce public lands access, and create more dangerous conditions for firefighters, forest workers, and visitors.

Big surprise— they’re manipulating us!

Salvage logging rips out recovering ecosystems which are naturally able to thrive again post-fire, sells the wood, and calls it “management.” The harsh reality is that the entire West must prepare for even more brutal wildfire seasons to come. Now is the time to stand with the trees, which protect all life against the escalating consequences of ecological destruction and climate change, including wildfires.

Loggers who appropriate the idea of “healthy forests, healthy communities” so they can make money are not to be trusted.

After all, any environmentalist knows the answer to the question, “What will money buy when there are no more trees?”

Salvage loggers’ business venture in disaster capitalism cannot kill our lived-in truth—Trees are always worth more standing!

That’s why over 50 students, community members, educators, and activists young and old risked arrest to protest post-fire logging on Tuesday, Nov 16th, occupying a logging road in a section of the Breitenbush watershed forest impending to be clear-cut. Behind a giant blockade built from gathered branches, they learned about the lies of salvage logging in Oregon and its logic of disaster capitalism, the wonders of post-fire forest ecology, and the joy of participating in direct action.

Community members shared their knowledge and skills in a series of workshops designed to educate and empower communities towards forest defense. One workshop focused on affinity groups, which are a strategy for small- scale community organizing, action, and resistance. Other workshops included field-checking, or gathering evidence about the state of an ecosystem, and hands- on outdoor learning and discussion.

Activists were able to explore the forest behind the blockade and connect with its renewed stage of life. For many, this occupation marked their first time being up close to a forest ecosystem recovering from wildfire. They discovered for themselves a landscape teeming with native evergreens, shrubs such as huckleberry, and several species of ferns. The patches of blackened soil on the forest floor were spread with fungi, mushrooms, and biodiverse bunches of mosses and lichens. It was fascinating to touch sections of char burned into the tree trunks, and observe how so many species are able to withstand fire damage and continue to grow on, even stronger than before.

If your heart has been broken by the wildfire seasons, realize that they will continue to worsen as climate change unfolds and late-stage capitalism persists. The sun glows redder and the smoke blows thicker every summer.

Climate change is here, and it has been here. So fight fossil fuels, and fight the capitalist police-state that sits back and watches us burn.

If your heart has been broken by the wildfire seasons, realize that the earth’s shared defense against the quickly compounding risks associated with climate change and environmental degradation exists in forests. They hold and protect the soil, filter air, regulate water in ecosystems, manage the weather, protect rivers and streams, and provide life.

So keep on hugging trees, and shout it out— Worth More Standing!

I encourage any UO students, faculty, staff, workers, and readers in Eugene and beyond to rise in resistance to the destruction of forests—without them, what would home be? Throw down your societal obligations to learn, grow, and stand strong in forest defense… Because the trees need your love now more than ever.

• Follow the work of environmentalist groups who helped organize this protest on instagram: Cascadia Forest Defenders @treesittersunion, and Portland Rising Tide @portlandrisingtide.

• Want to join other UO students passionate about forest defense? Email climatejusticeleague@gmail.com to join Climate Justice League’s forest defense crew!

• Readers are also welcome to email us insurgentuo@gmail.com to learn more about this direct action, or to express interest in plugging into local forest defense affinity groups.

Intro to the Party Issue

The Student Insurgent — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 00:00:00 -0700

Enough Parties, let’s party!

The United States of Amerikkka has historically and is today home to no less than a dozen revolutionary socialist political parties. Communist Party USA, Socialist Party USA, Socialist Workers Party, Communist Workers Party, Party for Socialism and Liberation, Revolutionary Communist Party, Socialist Equality Party, Socialist Alternative Party, Socialist Labor Party, the list goes on (and on). Really only two ever even attained relevance, let alone power, those first two, CPUSA and SPUSA, and those waves of relevance were both in the first half of the 20th Century and long gone now. Today they’re all irrelevant. But each of them with their few dozen, few hundred, or at most two thousand members nationwide are still chugging away, selling newspapers, recruiting starry-eyed college undergrads, having “national conferences” in people’s living rooms, fielding presidential candidates who consistently get less votes in every election than Mickey Mouse and Chuck Norris.

It should be obvious that this is not going to work. Sure plenty of these parties had to deal with serious state repression and fascist violence in the past, but many of them have been organizing unharmed for over fifty years and have nothing to show for it. The Party form is inherently flawed. It takes real energy and rage and passion and funnels it all into the cold, chrome, sterile world of government and officialdom, where it dies of boredom and despair.

There’s another way. Let’s bypass the mediation and onion-like layers of bureaucracy and representation. Let’s make change ourselves, and have fun doing it. Let’s block oil trains with impromptu dance parties right on the tracks. Let’s throw eggs at the platoons of riot cops and toilet paper over the homes of prosecutors. Let’s send photocopies of our butts to the university administrators in protest of their new bullshit restrictions on freedom of speech and assembly (be careful though, you can accidentally break that glass scanner and get a broken shard up the ass!) Let’s sneak in and squat in buildings so we can live and gather together without paying rent to some landlord. Let’s assail cop cars and police stations with water balloons filled with paint.

The resistance should not be boring. When it’s not absolutely terrifying, it should be fun!

No More Presidents!

anonymous — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 00:00:00 -0700

Let’s get one fucking thing straight here, dear reader. If Hillary Clinton had won this election and not Donald Trump, the necessity of taking to the streets and resisting would be just as dire. The election and inauguration were barely over and already these liberal party hacks have started talking about how crucial the 2018 and 2020 elections are. To hell with ‘em!

The lesson you were supposed to learn from the election of Orange Hitler is that this system of mass slaughter, enslavement, and destruction called America is far too dangerous for anyone to be in charge of. The problem is not Republicans, the problem is politicians. It was Hillary’s husband who rose to power on a racist tough-on-crime agenda. It was his Administration that oversaw the bombing of Kosovo and airstrikes on a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan, which precipitated a deadly shortage and humanitarian crisis. It was his Administration that neglected to sign the Kyoto Protocols in 1997, dooming any early international efforts to confront global warming.

If Hillary had won, we would still be fucked. She offered no answers to the serious problems of our time: growing fascist movements and their attendant terror attacks and hate crimes, the mass incarceration of nearly three million people, historically unprecedented income inequality, over a thousand police murders a year, the growing problems of climate change, the all-seeing eyes of police and NSA surveillance, the US’s bloody imperialist wars abroad, the horrific violence of borders and the expulsion of immigrants and refugees, the never-ending construction of oil pipelines that are sealing our planetary doom.

And don’t even get me started on the absolute madness of waiting years before we’re able to do anything about all of this. Wait until 2020? Are you insane? People are dying now. Millions rot in prison today. Climate change is causing the Sahara Desert to expand into and wipe out once fertile farmland today. Construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline is being completed as I write this. The world can’t fucking wait for the next pointless election. It couldn’t wait for this one or the last one either. As party bureaucrats and apparatchiks draw up plans for the next exciting season of reality TV pseudo-politics, Mother Earth withers and the pile of corpses produced by American imperialism grows. The enemy is not this president, the enemy is presidents. My only hope for the 2020 election is that it will be canceled.

There’s a street-based protest movement growing in response to Trump’s disastrous ascent to power, and that’s great whatever its message is. Any and all headaches for the authorities and disruptions of business as usual are good. But at some point it’s going to need a direction and an ideology. When that comes, the analysis should locate the problem in the state itself, rather than merely who sleeps in the White House.

The anarchists in the black blocs in Portland, Oakland, and DC on Election Night and Inauguration Day had the right idea: rage and destruction no matter what asshole takes power. Neither this president nor any other. No more presidents!

You Are Not Beautiful: Against the Fascism of Beauty, Fashion, and Looks

anonymous — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 00:00:00 -0700

Remember Marilyn Manson? The metal group? I consider him and his band the last rock stars. Manson’s reign of terror on MTV and the wider pop culture in the late 1990s and early 2000s was basically the last time a rock group captivated the public imagination before rock’n’roll was finally and irrevocably dethroned and hip hop and R&B tunes took over as the reigning pop music genres dominating the airwaves. Rock had a good run, for about fifty years, since Elvis Presley it had been the most popular genre of music throughout America and indeed the Western world, a symbol of American global cultural dominance. Don’t mistake me, I have no nostalgia for the era. Too many not-so-subtle racists pontificate sorrowfully about how a white-dominated music genre like rock (which was stolen shamelessly from black artists in the first place) was replaced with heavily black- and Latino-dominated music genres like hip hop and R&B.

Anyway, Marilyn Manson was a neat little star. He was an expert in shock rock, using outrageous statements and fashion to terrify conservative America and its delicate little morals. He used cross-dressing, onstage sex acts, horror movie imagery, Satanism, and songs about violence to outrage middle America and keep himself in the headlines. It was, of course, always a marketing scheme, the more the offended religious dweebs protested, the more albums and concert tickets he sold. But he and the band had enough artistic ability and interesting lyrics and musicianship that it didn’t feel cheap or overly insincere.

In 1997, at the Video Music Awards, Marilyn Manson, in a corset, leather underwear, and thigh-high stockings, took the stage in front of a giant American flag that had the fifty stars replaced with the lightning-bolt logo of the British Union of Fascists. Posing as the president standing at a podium, he said, among other remarks: “My fellow Americans, we will no longer be oppressed by the fascism of Christianity! And we will no longer be oppressed by the fascism of beauty!” before he and the band played what I consider to be their single best song, “The Beautiful People” off the album Antichrist Superstar.

“The fascism of beauty” is a great turn of phrase, and I think it’s important. Manson wasn’t the first to come up with such a concept. Psychological researchers have long known of the existence of what they call “lookism,” the tendency nearly all humans display to overvalue people seen as attractive, and devalue people seen as unattractive. It’s pretty insidious. Pretty people are perceived as being more competent, more trustworthy, kinder, and more intelligent than their uglier peers, regardless of their actual personality. The same goes for height and weight. Being taller and being thinner can increase how much money you make, and improve how your boss evaluates your work performance.

The cult of beauty pervades all aspects of our society; it is an authoritarian institution. Like all the most successful authoritarian institutions, it is hardly visible to most, it appears entirely natural while in fact it is mostly artificial and held up by violence, and its subjects enforce it themselves. The cult of beauty is racist, sexist, ableist, homo- and transphobic, and most crucially: capitalist.

The cult of beauty holds that attractiveness is not just a lucky accident of birth, like being smart or physically strong, but is in fact the most important part of your self, and if it does not come naturally, should be extensively (and expensively) cultivated, by any means necessary. In certain extreme cases, a minimum level of physical attractiveness is required for your very humanity to be recognized, for you to be treated as a being worthy of dignity, respect, and freedom.

Although beauty is largely inborn, a lucky accident of birth, this is understood as being no excuse. You have no right to be ugly. If you are ugly, it is your responsibility, through grooming, dress, cosmetics, the maintenance of a certain lifestyle, medical intervention, and in some cases surgery, to try to attain some level of beauty. To refuse provokes severe punishment. Social ostracism from friends and potential lovers is only the beginning. Being ugly can mean not getting a job. Being ugly can mean being seen as a threat. Indeed, some people are so ugly they can lose their freedom. Certain ugly people, especially the homeless, are routinely banished from public space, they are “an eyesore”, and the police evict them constantly from publicly accessible places like parks, sidewalks, and bus stops, for the crime of “loitering”, a crime that only exists for the ugly and unwanted. Failure to groom oneself and maintain an arbitrary standard of personal hygiene often results in the physically and mentally disabled being institutionalized, even if they are otherwise capable of taking care of themselves. Up to the 1970’s, in the US, many cities even had what were called “ugly laws,” in which people who were physically disabled, deformed, or had been maimed in war or industrial accidents were legally banned from public spaces, described as “unsightly and unseemly”. These people, who were often beggars, were a nuisance who needed to be controlled. In many places, up until very recently, failure to conform to gender roles could also result in psychiatric institutionalization or even arrest and imprisonment. Transgender people know this harsh truth better than anyone, their level of acceptance and respect in straight cis society is almost completely dependent on the degree to which they “pass” as a sufficiently beautiful member of their gender. The non-passing trans person is considered terribly ugly, and not passing frequently invites violence. Trans women especially face a nearly unique threat, merely existing in public space often results in savage attacks, even murders, by transphobic men. “Passing” as a “real” (i.e. cisgender) woman is a matter of personal safety. I repeat: one has no right to be ugly.

And far from being a wasteful but ultimately harmless pursuit, beauty and fashion are often actually downright dangerous, and hazardous to our health. In many times and places it has gone as far as to demand permanent mutilation of the body, and not mere superficial mutilation like skin piercing, circumcision, and tattooing, but practices as destructive and disabling as foot-binding, breast-ironing, waist-training, and the most horrific of all, female genital mutilation. Hairspray contains noxious fumes that pollute the atmosphere. Tanning leads to skin cancer. Many animals are killed for their fur and their skin, and most cosmetics are tested on critters who must be tortured to ensure the products are “safe” for human use. Elephants will soon be wiped out due to poaching, their tusks highly prized as the source of ivory for jewelry. Billion-dollar industries are built on selling dubiously safe and dubiously effective weight loss supplements and treatments for acne. Anorexia, a psychiatric disorder based on an extreme obsession with thinness to the point of self-starvation, and which is highly correlated with exposure to advertising and television, is more likely to cause death than any other mental illness. But health, animals, and Mother Earth all must be sacrificed on the altar of beauty.

The cult of beauty is an oppressive institution that, in my view, like religion, capitalism, and the nation-state, should not be reformed but abolished. It cannot be wielded for progressive or egalitarian purposes, though there are many who would try. There are many who wish to expand “beauty standards” to include marginalized groups, such as people of color who lack the stereotypical white physical features that the Eurocentric cult of beauty deems the most valuable. Rather than attacking the advertising, fashion, and cosmetic industries that sell this harmful ideology, they would rather seek to be included in it, to expand the number of people who can be seen as beautiful. There is a fat acceptance movement that aims to reduce what they consider to be the arbitrary notion that thinness is beautiful and fatness is ugly. Social media sites like Tumblr and Instagram are chock full of professional photo-shoots of beautiful “alternative” models who are amputees, in wheelchairs, or bald-headed cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. There is even a movement to create “feminist” pornography that features actors and actresses who transgress gender norms, or are physically disabled, or fat, or hairy.

All of these miss the point. The cult of beauty is largely capable of recuperating all of these efforts. But it would be no less oppressive. Though it often serves this purpose, the cult of beauty is about far more than privileging men, white people, cisgender people, thin people, and able-bodied people. Even if such biases were torn down, it would still serve the purpose of social control, of demanding certain behaviors from people on threat of severe punishment. The cult of beauty is nothing if not arbitrary. They can sell you anything and everything. They can sell you one quality today and its opposite tomorrow. The entire beauty-advertising-industrial complex, which encompasses clothing, cosmetics, grooming, and more is built on a model of attacking your self-esteem and self-worth, in order to sell you trillions of dollars of commodities that you never wanted in the first place. Far from undermining this profitable bonanza, the progressive efforts to expand the cult of beauty offer growth and increased market share to these industries. More customers to be targeted, more advertisements to be broadcast, more stuff to be sold. And as with much of capitalism, we are not the masters of our possessions, but instead our possessions become the masters of us. Many feminists have remarked before about how the beauty industry has created generations of women neurotically obsessed with their waistlines and the state of their clothes and hair. And more and more these days, men are being victimized and indoctrinated just as intensely by the cult of beauty. Such people are too busy with minutiae to care about fighting for change in the world. The cult of beauty encourages the narcissistic impulse.

The only solution is to wage war on this institution. To reject beauty altogether, and accept and embrace ugliness. This war is half personal and psychological and half external and offensive. We must change our minds and our habits, but we must also attack the edifices of our oppression. It means challenging lookism in our own minds, interrogating whether our opinions of people are truly based on honest evaluation of their character, of the qualities about people that actually matter, like whether they are kind, trustworthy, funny, or interesting, and not whether we think they’re pretty. It means reducing our consumption and indulgence in vapid consumer culture, buying clothes because they’re comfortable and affordable, not because they are fashionable, wearing them even after they’re ripped or stained because those things don’t actually make clothes unusable. It means attacking, ruthlessly, the all-pervasive propaganda of the cult of beauty: advertising. Deface billboards with graffiti, smash the display cases of bus station ads, set fire to and blow up the trendy clothing stores and cosmetics kiosks. We don’t need them and we don’t want them! Embrace the ugly, shun the beautiful. Adorn your body in new and interesting ways, or don’t adorn it at all and practice nudism instead. Don’t be attractive, be frightening. Don’t stand out, be plain. Use clothing as a tool. Cover your face to elude identification by cops and surveillance cameras. Or conversely, use outrageous public nudity to attract attention for demonstrations and protests. And most of all, ignore beauty, devalue beauty. Don’t accept the comforting lie that “everyone is beautiful.” We’re not! You’re not! Our bodies are just decaying organic matter. Rotting meat. Compost. Shit. We’re flawed, we’re weak, we’re stupid, we’re ugly and God damn proud of it. Value your fellow human being for the things about them that truly matter, not their disgusting flesh prison. Value them for them, and not for what they can offer you or offer society. Resist the corporate onslaught on your self-esteem and your sanity. They need you but you don’t need them.

The chorus to Marilyn Manson’s “The Beautiful People” is worth remembering:

Hey, you, what do you see?

Something beautiful or something free?

You have to pick one, you can only be one or the other. Will you be beautiful, or will you be free?

Police Raid Community Center in Bronx

anonymous — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0700

South Bronx community center Rebel Diaz Arts Collective (RDACBX) shut down by Federal marshals and NYPD. Rally to be held denouncing lockout and forced eviction. March 1, 2013- After a violent daytime raid yesterday, Thursday, February 28, 2013, on the warehouse turned arts space at 478 Austin Place in the Bronx, members of Hip-Hop community center RDACBX are denouncing their forced eviction at a rally to be held at 6pm today in front of their locked out building. The building landowner, local commercial developer Marc Pogostin of Austin Property Corp., had for months stalled negotiations on a new agreement with the RDACBX after the group’s original lease expired this past November. Despite diverse support for RDACBX from local politicians, churches, and community organizations in the area, Austin Property Corp. eventually refused to renew the lease, citing concerns about the group’s political murals, and prompting the surprise eviction yesterday.

“The violent actions taken yesterday are an attack on young people, artists, and Hip Hop culture,” says RDACBX co-founder RodStarz. “In a time where budget cuts, stop and frisk, and gentrification are affecting our communities, it’s a shame we are being treated like criminals. There is no justification for this eviction.” Rebel Diaz pieceKaren Louviere, 19, a past participant in RDACBX youth programs, expressed her disappointment at the violent shutdown of the space. “They came in with armed officers into what is supposed to be a safe space for the community. A space that has served as an alternative for young people in the area, helping develop their talents in a positive way.” The internationally renowned RDACBX, host to weekly cultural performances and educational workshops, had recently announced plans for the creation of the Richie Perez Radical Library, as well as the continuation of their widely recognized Boogie Mics open mic series, and the SxSBX Hip-Hop Festival. “Despite the violent removal of RDACBX from its space, RDACBX will continue to work on its development, as it strives to be a resource for the community. There is a need for this organization to exist in The South Bronx,” says Claudia De La Cruz, a member of the collective.

Eugene Police Create and Escalate Conflict Raid House

anonymous — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0700

At 3 A.M. on Friday night, nine police cars, including one ‘Prisoner Transport Van,’ blocked Alder Street between 16th and 17th. A police line stretched across the street and across the length of the Campbell Club house on the other side of the street. Not even a few hours earlier, the Campbell Club had been bumping their usual beats, hosting a benefit show for a new student group on campus. However, after hours of continued escalation by the Eugene Police Department, the house had been raided by the police — doors kicked in, residents taken to jail, and community members shaken by the five-hour long incident. 23 were arrested, with 14 taken to jail for the morning.

From the beginning of the night, the EPD actively escalated the situation — transforming what could have been the issuing of a warning or citation for an alleged noise violation, into a warranted raid of the house. Upon an alleged altercation with someone on the front porch, an officer called for backup. While many were able to leave the party before cops trapped residents and party-goers inside, other party-goers were unable to leave for several hours due to EPD’s persistence to enter through any crack of the door. Any resident who stepped outside to speak to the police was arrested and taken into custody.

Residents of the Campbell Club repeatedly invoked their fourth amendment right — protection from unreasonable search and seizure, requiring the police to have a warrant before entering a home without consent, and their fifth amendment right — the right to remain silent. Several residents had ‘Know Your Rights’ training, and were familiar with police interactions, including the lies and force that can be legally used to coerce cooperation.

On the street, community members videotaped police interactions and documented officer and car numbers. This is a practice called ‘CopWatch,’ and it is a powerful tool in holding the police accountable to the community. While police tried to quarantine the area in order to disrupt the documentation of their actions and to move supportive community members further away from the house, those on the outside also asserted their rights to film and be on public property.

Late into the night, police obtained a warrant to search for ‘sound equipment.’ The search, which could have begun and ended in the living room where the criminal equipment was quietly sitting, instead went through every room and to the roof, breaking down individuals’ doors and waking sleeping residents. It is unclear if the search of individuals’ rooms was warranted.

Police are now saying that they would have liked to use the Social Host Ordinance, which goes into effect in April, against the Campbell Club. “This is kind of a prime example of why that ordinance is going to be enforced,” said Sgt. David Natt. The Social Host Ordinance can lead to fines of up to $1,000 per person, as well as response costs. Had the Social Host Ordinance been in effect, it could have been on the Campbell Club’s tab to pay for the police response of between 10 and 14 patrol units for a five-hour period.

This enforcement, however, has nothing to do with keeping students — or anyone else — safe. With increasing legal force and firepower around the UO campus and Eugene, students and others in the campus area are forced into a compromising and untrusting relationship with police. Students may assert their rights, but Eugene Police have made it clear that their homes and bodies will not be respected — even if they have to get a warrant to prove it.

So Whats The Deal With Gmos?

anonymous — Sun, 04 Nov 2012 16:53:34 -0700

GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms) and GMO foods have made quite a stir lately. California’s Proposition 37, if passed next week, will require all vendors of food made with GMO ingredients to label them. Even though almost every developed nation requires labeling of GMO foods, it is not currently required in any state in the United States. Genetically modified foods are meals or snacks made from organisms that have had their DNA spliced with the genetic code from another organism. They arrived on the scene in the US around 1996, and really took off swiftly. After fifteen years with no GMO labels on our foods, though, many environmental groups are advocating for all that to change. So why the big fuss now?

The fuss

GMO foods in the US are limited to a list of just a few species, but pervasive ones. According to the Institute for Responsible Technology, “Currently commercialized GM crops in the U.S. include soy (94%), cotton (90%), canola (90%), sugar beets (95%), corn (88%), Hawaiian papaya (more than 50%), zucchini and yellow squash (over 24,000 acres).”

In the United States, corn, soybeans and canola are some of the major building blocks from which food scientists construct many processed foods. In fact, the Center for Food Safety says GMOs make up about 70% of processed foods sold in the US. It’s sometimes hard to document exactly which ones they are, though, because they’re not labeled. According to the Non-GMO Project, the current legal GMOs haven’t been genetically modified to produce higher yields, better nutrition or even drought resistance.“Virtually all commercial GMOs are engineered to withstand direct application of herbicide and/or to produce an insecticide.” The existence of herbicide-resistant crops means that farmers can spray weed killer directly on the food and still have a harvest to yield; and that’s exactly what our friends at the Monsanto corporation have been doing for over a decade with “Round Up-Ready crops.”

Rats!

Ingesting Round Up on a regular basis sounds to the untrained ear like a recipe for disaster, and there’s some evidence that it is. Peer-reviewed animal studies have found that GMO foods caused problems in the liver, kidneys and blood, along with the development of abnormal immune responses and reproductive abnormalities in the animals that ate them. More importantly, a lifetime feeding study on rats released last month in the peer-reviewed journal Food and Toxicology suggested a new side effect of GMO foods - cancer. The rats that consumed GMO foods from the Monsanto corporation along with the herbicide normally sprayed on them (Round Up) developed large tumors in various places in their bodies. GMO studies like the ones mentioned above are very controversial. The USDA considers a lengthening list of genetically modified foods to be safe for consumption. The companies that develop the crops consider them great for profit margins. More than that, there aren’t any long-term studies that specifically focus on the physiological reaction of GMOs on human beings. Could 70% of our processed food really be cancer-causing without us knowing about it?

Guinea pigs

Rats develop must faster than humans, and GMOs have not been around long enough for us to see the lifetime effects on human beings… yet. True, as many scientists and chemical company representatives have pointed out, much of the most conclusive evidence linking GMOs to cancer comes from just one study. And yet, this one study is the only peer-reviewed study that has run long enough to test if GMOs and their complimentary herbicides (like Round-Up) cause cancer when ingested. Only time and many, many more studies will be able to tell if the results have will be duplicated.

For the moment, however, we are right in the middle of a lab experiment of our own. The American food system is so inundated with genetically modified foods that it has become taboo to label them. We, the uninformed consumers, are the test group; the control will be certain Western European countries that won’t touch the stuff. And in fifty years…

More conclusive studies need to be done before we can say whether GMO foods are safe for human consumption. In the meantime, however, you may be interested in escaping the grand-scale experimentation at play, and there are several common-sense ways to diminish the genetically modified foods in your diet.

Here’s what you can do

Want to avoid getting cancer from the food you eat? Though GMO foods are un-labeled in the store, you can get get a pretty good idea of what is and isn’t GMO if you follow the following guidelines:

Go to the Farmers’ Market or join a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) Here’s a great chance to talk with the farmer who grew your food! Ask him or her how they feel about GMOs, and find out if they use GMO seed or animal feed. In Eugene, there’s a Farmer’s Market every Saturday in the park blocks downtown and every Thursday at 28th and Hilyard, next to the Amazon Community Center. For more local information, check Lane County Farmer’s Market
Do a little reading Many companies in need of a little marketing boost have voluntarily paid for a certification process to ensure their foods are GMO-free. The Non-GMO Project has a list of GMO-free products.
Buy organic at the supermarket If the food you’re buying has a USDA organic label, it is legally required to have 95% organic ingredients. You can find more info on the National Organic Program website. Be careful though: while GMOs officially cannot be marketed as USDA organic, there is no system in place to test for GMO contamination in already certified foods.
Check the UPC stickers on produce While processed and packaged food products which may contain GMOs are not labeled, plain old produce is. Every veggie or piece of fruit you pick up at the store has a UPC or PLN sticker directly on it, or on the price display. This numbering system is put in place for suppliers and grocers, not consumers. So keep in mind that this is merely a guideline until full-fledged GMO-labeling becomes standard. Conventionally-grown produce contains a 4-digit code, such as ‘4011’ for bananas. This means that they were (probably) not genetically engineered, but they have been grown with pesticides, herbicides, and perhaps treated with radiation in order to maintain freshness. The code for GMO produce is a 5-digit code beginning with the number ‘8’, so for instance, ‘84011’ would represent the code for a GMO banana. Organic produce, which is free of pesticides/herbicides, irradiation, and GMOs is a 5-digit code beginning with the number ‘9’. So the code ‘94011’ would be used for an organic banana. So always remember to look for the number ‘9’ when shopping for produce at the store, because this shit is bananas!

Home Occupation in Portland by the Portland Liberatory Organizing Council (PLOC)

anonymous — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 17:13:32 -0700

Portland, OR – On Sunday, August 5th, residents of NE Portland held a block party in the historically black Woodlawn neighborhood, to celebrate the ongoing defense of Alicia Jackson’s home from foreclosure, and to publicly reclaim the new duplex built on her land. This property is also on Ms. Jackson’s land and was taken during the foreclosure process. Community members plan to use the reclaimed duplex, which is currently the subject of a legal dispute, as a base of organizing against gentrification and police violence in the neighborhood.

“This property was illegally taken from me by the banks. This community is strong. We will not sit by and watch developers destroy our neighborhood, while the police harass our youth and drive families from this community,” said Alicia Jackson, member of the Black Working Group and subject of much attention when her home was liberated by 500 people on May 1 of this year.

Northeast is often called “the soul of Portland” because of its historically black neighborhoods, but gentrification, the replacement of locals by wealthier residents through bank investment and uncontrolled development, has changed that. In response, a growing number of people in NE are waging a public fight to keep their homes, rather than be relocated by the banks. The action at Ms. Jackson’s home on May Day was the first of several community supported home defenses in the city this year. On Friday, July 27th, 79 year old Annette Steele declared that she would resist eviction, saying “This is my home. They can’t take it away from me. My neighbors support me and if the sheriff comes, I’m ready… I don’t have a gun anymore, but I keep hot water on the stove.”

“Housing must be defended to end violence in working-class communities. Stable housing creates an environment for community self-reliance and healthy relationships. Without secure housing, families are displaced and communities are fragmented,” said Lobo, co-founder of the Blazing Arrow Organization, a group that formed to fight gentrification and police violence in North and Northeast Portland. “Gentrification breaks the tie between generations, and forces communities to depend more heavily on outsiders such as the police to solve conflicts. Defending homes and stopping eviction protects the community’s safety.”

Continued exploitative development of NE Portland is tied directly to the PPB’s Gang Enforcement program. Since the program began, over 200 people, mostly black youth, have been arrested each month along Killingsworth between N Interstate Ave. and MLK Blvd. In addition to land and building reclamation, Blazing Arrow Organization is beginning community patrols to monitor arrests and support people as police conflicts arise. The community patrols will be based out of the newly liberated center.

“Working people deserve to live without the fear of losing their home or being brutalized by the police. The BAO will use this new organizing center to stop gentrification and respond to police violence. It will be open to anyone fighting for freedom from white supremacy and oppression. We are working class, queer, and people of color, committed to creating a society that both meets our basic needs and respects our human dignity. We are prepared to defend ourselves and the work we are doing, and invite others to work alongside us."

The Blazing Arrow Organization was formed by a group of community members to address gentrification by way of housing defense.

Dreaming of Equality and Fulfillment

Joel DeVyldere — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 17:23:14 -0700

“We want freedom, but we settle for sports cars.”

A room full of hippies, environmentalists and student activists reflect in wonder at the articulate musings of speaker, author and neo-economic dreamer Charles Eisenstein, a well-spoken man with flagrantly optimistic notions. Both energetic and calm, the 35-year-old joyfully makes the case that a culture based on consuming goods is not spiritually fulfilling for human beings.

Mr. Eisenstein recently came through Eugene on a speaking tour where he expounded on topics from his book Sacred Economics. At present, he is mesmerizing a crowd at the University of Oregon, telling a story on the history of the social and economic organization of people.

A key theme in Charles’ story is the saga of human happiness and well-being. He describes a time when the social climate of small villages enabled people to provide for each other without fear of being scammed. In Charles’ history lesson, the well-being of one’s neighbors used to factor heavily in the thought life of each member of a community; and local reputations made trade a less-than-shady affair in the economies of the not-so-distant past, he claims.

Thanks to new systems of social organization, modern people don’t interact like that anymore. A twist in the plot reveals a generation of people suffering the effects of entire lifetimes of for-profit interactions, resulting in cosmic anonymity and endemic wariness.

So where have we gone wrong? A phenomenon called Capitalism has helped us look at the world in a profit-motivated way, and the scarcity which that system creates has sapped us of the energy for thinking of others first.

In Capitalism, Charles argues, money is based on debt – created in way that ensures that there will never be enough to go around. We are playing musical chairs in modern economies, and everyone is trying to make sure they’re sitting pretty when the music stops. The resulting atmosphere has made an attitude of scarcity and fierce competition the norm, even though abundance and cooperation might serve us better.

Capitalism uses a measure called the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to quantify the health and prosperity of a group of people. But Charles is concerned that this isn’t a very good way of looking at the world – things like human happiness aren’t even factored in, he says. Worse than that, in modern Capitalism, sectors of the economy like the pharmaceutical drug market can show increases that are dependent on human suffering.

“I think that the best way to grow the economy today is to make people miserable, alone, disconnected,” Charles offers.

Another problem is in that modern Capitalism, rapid growth is the only way to keep the economy from collapsing. A phenomenon called infinite growth economics makes sure that we humans continue to extract unmitigated quantities of natural resources from the earth in the quickest, cheapest and often most destructive manner possible with no conceivable end in sight. “Money, as it stands today, is an exception to ecology,” Charles notes.

Soon enough, however, Charles’ rather extreme critiques of Capitalism shift into a vague optimism for future models of human organization. He starts talking about freedom, in a post-sports-car world.

But what makes this economist think a better way of living is possible? Why is a man so well-studied in the troubles of this world so hopeful for a healing and fulfilling future for humankind? I had an opportunity to ask Charles a couple of questions to clarify his positions on social and economic ills and virtues. Here’s what he had to say:

Joel: I’ve heard you talk briefly about the Occupy movement, and how it reveals frustrations with society that take their toll on 100% of people. What would you say are some liabilities of the present model of capitalism for the average American?

Charles: For one thing, the present model is dependent on endless growth, which is depleting nature and destroying community. Furthermore, as resource depletion and market saturation make rapid growth increasingly difficult, debt rises faster than income, unemployment increases, and wealth concentrates in fewer and fewer hands. We see this day in the ubiquitous debt crisis.

Today college students graduate with tens of thousands of dollars of debt that they’ll spend half their lives repaying. This is wrong. Just one or two generations ago, public universities were virtually free. Since then, the wealth of society has increased several-fold. Why is it that we can no longer pay for those things we once could?

There are many reasons, some superficial (such as the shifting of taxation away from the wealthy) and some much deeper (the end of growth causing concentration of wealth). But I think we should begin to question the unquestionable: for example, a system in which you have to spend half your life in debt just to get an education.

Joel: What do you mean by the concept of “the discrete and separate self”? How is identity defined, and what is a ‘healthier’ way of defining it?

Charles: Every culture offers a different answer to the question, “Who am I?” Ours emphasizes the individual, fundamentally separate from other individuals in a universe that is also separate. Naturally, then, we find ourselves in a constant state of competition and anxiety. But other cultures had different answers, in which “self” was not so rigidly distinguished from “other” – from community, from tribe, from the land, the planet, the cosmos.

Today we are beginning to recover an understanding of these lost connections, so that our innate knowledge that “what I do to the world, I do to myself” no longer seems so irrational. More and more of us seek to be truly of service.

Unfortunately, our social institutions – such as the money system – keep us in a state of separation and make it hard to be of service. Fortunately that is beginning to change; unfortunately the first part of that shift is a collapse of much of what is familiar. We are living in a time of constant crises, one after another. We can sense that these aren’t bumps in the road of “normal”. Huge changes are afoot in our lifetimes.

Joel: What is the most important book that someone who is interested in understanding alternative economics should read?

Charles: I’d love to suggest my book, Sacred Economics, and of course there are many more. I think E.F. Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful was a really important, seminal work in the field. Also David Korten’s When Corporations Rule the World. I also recommend the writings of Wendell Berry. Thomas Greco and Bernard Lietaer have made important contributions also worth reading.

Joel: If you were talk to president Obama tomorrow, what would you say?

Charles: I would tell him that sooner or later he is going to have to step out of the box. The conventional tools of economic policy are less and less effective, and will continue to be so. Using them, he can only succeed in postponing the day of reckoning for a few more years, and the cost to nature and society will be high. The people are ready for more radical solutions like the ones I and many other thinkers are developing.

Wikipedia Will Blackout Tonight in Protest of SOPA

anonymous — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 17:31:32 -0700

In addition to Reddit, Boing Boing and a few other monster sites, Wikipedia English is going dark tonight to raise awareness about the looming Stop Online Piracy Act.

SOPA is currently snaking its way through the US House of Representatives. The impending PROTECT IP Act is also under scrutiny.

The enormous free encyclopedia site will be out for 24 hours.

SOPA is a bill that threatens directly enforced action against sites that host user-uploaded content which may have been copy-righted. The bill threatens to facilitate a U.S.-intelligence-led crackdown on information flow by providing legal barricades to slow and/or stop the flow of information on high-traffic sites. Anonymous posted a video reply back in November.

Wikipedia released a statement saying today’s blackout was made “through a consensus decision-making process.” It quoted from a recent statement from administrators that indicates that the decision to go dark was “the largest level of participation in a community discussion ever seen on Wikipedia.”

Some thoughts on this MLK day

Joel DeVyldere — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 17:23:14 -0700

We don’t exist in a vacuum, as convenient as that might be. Because we’re alive and co-habitating on earth, any disconnection we can conjure tends to be of the artificially motivated and anti-humanitarian bent.

You might hear writers, thinkers and speakers articulating a particular human condition as an ‘inter-mingling of destinies.’

It’s true.

Schisms turn to rifts, and erupt into chasms. Gravity has a way of working with gale-force winds, and tree-clingers fall, limbs ripped from the icy branches in an awesome display of ‘just because.’

Houselessness and poverty are states of being which are becoming increasingly criminalized in the US. In cities like Boulder, CO, sleeping outside is a crime punishable by ticketing. In trendier cities like San Francisco and Berkeley, California, it is a punishable crime to sit on the sidewalk.

CNBC reported “18.4 million vacant homes in the U.S.” last year, while the Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress recently reported the documented the emergency shelter stays of 1.6 million houselesss human beings in the States.

There are least eleven open and available houses for every person freezing on these streets.

Houseless people are often considered a problem for which the government is constructing creative solutions - Yet survival fires, urban gardening and unlicensed makeshift shelters are almost universally illegal in the States. Houseless folks are not hitting bad luck in nature; It’s society that’s kicking them out and holding them back.

It’s true that in the States there are not enough jobs. Money is tight; and yet resources are far from scarce.

Even though there is enough food to feed them, enough clean water for them to drink and enough sewers to carry away their waste, the poor and houseless are subject to a cycle of supply and demand engineered to maximize profits for landowners.

Worse than any economic condition, the enforcement of property ownership has separated those who could not (literally or figuratively) inherit land and scattered many into hiding. A commonly voiced isolationist maxim advocates for living “off the grid,” but…

We cannot continue to trust and invest in a system that causes this kind of division. We cannot continue to endorse and proliferate capitalism:

Because in our system money is no longer “facilitating exchange” in a manner that is beneficial to human beings.
Because our trees and our soil are not, in fact, capable of withstanding infinite expansion.
Because the token American export is swiftly detonated explosives.

War and poverty are not so different; both are inflicted by the rich and powerful on the poor and disenfranchised through forcefully insistent intermediaries.

What these two oppressions have in common may be the US Empire’s ultimate undoing: Because the rich insisted on agitating the poor, the class war has already begun.

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” - Martin Luther King Jr. (1967)

Protests and Riots

Seth Manzel — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 17:43:03 -0700

Before struggles evolve into open warfare, they often manifests themselves in the form of protests and riots. People who feel that the political system is not responding to their grievances sometimes take to the streets to demonstrate to the establishment and public at large they are unhappy with the current situation. The objective of a protest is to bring about change through a symbolic show of force. The road to political significance is long and winding for the protester. The activist is depending on many things to be in line for his/her message to be effective.

The protester’s message must be clear and powerful. With all the advertising that the general population is exposed to, it is unreasonable to expect them to pick up on a convoluted or obtuse argument. The real world operates off of sound bites. If protesters can’t get their message across in one concise sentence then they should not expect anyone to understand or care.

The message must be picked up by the media. The effect of a demonstration is very local. Only people in the area of the demonstration will be exposed to the message unless the media chooses to cover the event. Intelligent agitators will understand the need for mainstream media to cover their event. While they may try to compensate for a lack of media coverage through their own, small scale media, the end product will have much less impact.

Activists also have to worry about what the media will do to their message. It is very common for the media to cover a protest, but not say what it is about, or twist the meaning of the movement into something it is not. This is why a concise and message is so important.

If the media does successfully transmit the agitators ideas to the people, it is quite likely that they will not care. In a world of distractions like sports, Internet, video games, and music, it is easy for people to ignore the world’s problems. An apathetic public is the largest obstacle that an agitator faces. Most people in the United States will not be troubled to vote. If the simple act of voting is too much work for most people, then it is an uphill battle for the activist who hopes for people to lobby their representatives for change.

Because demonstrations are not very effective, the establishment is well served to let them take place. A peaceful protest that will not bear fruit in the form of change is an opiate to the small segment of the population that cares enough to act. It is far better that they exert their energies marching, chanting, and holding signs than through direct action or some other, more effective means.

It is also a good way to gather information on dissidents. If a government doesn’t allow peaceful protest, then drives activists underground. Their activities become hard to monitor under such conditions. Many resources are required to form intelligence networks that will infiltrate and gather information on the activities of malcontents. If the establishment allows peaceful protest, it needs only to observe the crowd to identify key players in a movement.

Still, the government will always respect the power of people in large numbers. Even at a pro-establishment rally, one will find police, ready to react to signs of unrest. Crowds, regardless of their purpose, are inherently dangerous. Volumes have been written on crowd psychology. When part of a crowd, individuals will act in ways that they never would alone. In this way, a crowd is an organism all to itself.

Savvy agitators will capitalize on this, whipping the crowd into a frenzy with chants, drums, angry music or even bagpipes. Dissidents will usually place cadre at strategic points in the group to control their movement, initiate or discourage actions, and maintain their focus. Without these key figures the throng can dissipate, loose momentum, or go out of control- causing much destruction. Police responding to crowds face a number of challenges. They must maintain order, which is a fine line between allowing the crowd to have their way and dispersing the crowd. An unchecked crowd that is bent on destruction must be dispersed. At the same time, a rapidly dispersing crowd can cause as much damage as they were when they were rioting.

In a crowd control situation, police must isolate the area, protect likely targets, and maintain control. In countries like the U.S., UK, France and Germany, police are somewhat accountable for their actions. In situations where accountability is an issue, police mitigate liability by applying best practices. In places like Burma or Occupied Palestine, protesters should expect no quarter. This writing will cover the former, in the latter, police will use whatever force they deem necessary.

The first priority for police is to isolate the area. They must prevent the disorder from spreading to unaffected areas. This way the destruction will be minimized. It is important that they move uninvolved people from the area. In this way they can insure that innocent people are not harmed by their actions against the crowd. Police will also prevent unauthorized people from entering the area to keep late comers from adding to the crowd’s strength or possibly introducing weapons. Finally, they have to prevent the escape of people who are bent on expanding the disturbance area.

Police will identify and protect likely targets of destruction or looting. Key buildings like courthouses, jails, banks, and armories will get special attention from establishment forces. This may entail utilizing existing private or proprietary security forces already assigned to these places. In some municipalities, security guards are deputized by local authorities, giving them the same powers as law enforcement agents.

Extra patrols will also concentrate on protecting utilities. If demonstrators were to knock out power to a city, it would draw people out of their homes who would normally never dream of taking part in a protest. It would also promote civil unrest amongst the general population and ensure media coverage for the malcontents. Police cannot allow agitators to take advantage of this obvious force multiplier. Critical services like hospitals and cellular towers also warrant police attention. Taking a radio or television station would be a major victory for dissidents as they would not only interrupt the message of the establishment, but they could broadcast their own propaganda. Police must place a high priority on preventing this.

VIPs like government officials, police administrators, and statist figures also deserve protection. They could be targeted by anti-establishment forces who want their voices heard. Maintaining control of the situation is key. Control activities include monitoring, dispersal, and containment of the crowd. Once police have lost control, any number of evils may be predicated by the malcontents without consequence. However, by judiciously applying a combination of controlling activities, this will not happen.

Monitoring can include any number of methods. Video surveillance is by far the most effective means of crowd control. Individuals will sharply curtail their activities once they realize that their shenanigans are being preserved for posterity, and possibly a jury. For this reason establishment forces have nothing to gain by hiding their video cameras. In fact, Special Response Corporation, a private security firm, goes out of its way to purchase large 1980’s era video cameras to record crowd behavior because of their unmistakable silhouette.

It may be advantageous for police to infiltrate the crowd to identify leaders and eavesdrop on their conversations. Specialized surveillance equipment like parabolic ears, or microwave listening devices may be employed for that same reason.

Dispersal is also a means of control, however it can be dangerous to members of the crowd and to bystanders in the direction that the crowd is driven. Smart incident commanders will ensure that the crowd always has a safe and open route or routes of egress. Sun Tzu warns against hindering a fleeing enemy. Rightfully so- if a crowd is completely encircled by obstacles and police, it is a dangerous situation for all involved. A errant gunshot, the deployment of riot control agents, or the close proximity of the rioters could spark a panic. When a crowd is panicked, it will disperse, even if it involves trampling its own participants or going through police officers. There are many cases of soccer riots where crowds have pushed people through chain link fences like cheese through a grater. It is also possible that the dispersing crowd will reform somewhere else to continue its mayhem where police are not present. For this reason, it is important for police to identify and neutralize insurgent leaders before the crowd is dispersed. It is important to realize that the resolve of individuals is amplified by the crowd, and the crowd is directed by its cadre. Once the cadre are removed from the equation, the crowd will act as it is directed.

Once the conditions for dispersal are right the incident commander should issue dispersal proclamation. It should give specific instructions on what is expected of the crowd. If it imposes a time limit, the amount of time allotted should be reasonable. A commander who gives a large crowd five seconds to disperse should expect casualties on both sides. The proclamation should be in a language that the crowd understands. Giving a dispersal proclamation to a crowd of immigrants in English would be a misguided step. There should be clear consequences for malcontents who do not comply. The consequences should be terrible enough that only the most hardened among them would stay. If the crowd refuses to disperse the incident commander has many tools in his/her arsenal to impel dispersal. Crowd control agents are an effective way to force evacuation. I use the word evacuation because dispersal implies an organic and peaceful exit. Riot control agents will cause a panicked sprint by many members of the crowd. Because of this, the incident commander faces a double liability in that the agents will injure some people in the crowd and the resulting stampede to escape will cause more injuries. However, when no other options exist, the controlled use of these weapons can bring about the desired effect.

At this point it is important to mention the proper use of force. Almost all agencies employ some variation of an escalation of force policy. The idea is that law enforcement agents should use the minimum amount of force necessary to accomplish their objectives. The escalation of force is: shout, show, shove, shoot. Often times, the first two, shout and show, are transposed, but it is of little consequence.

On an individual level an officer may shout by issuing instructions like “Stop. Put your hands up.” The officer shows when he/she demonstrates his/her ability to employ violence like producing a baton. Shove is the application of nonlethal force like actually shoving a person, hitting them with a baton or mace. Shoot is the use of deadly force. Ideally less lethal weapons like the tazer or rubber buckshot should be used in lieu of deadly force, however they are often used in place of a baton.

The incident commander’s actions should also embody escalation of force policies. The dispersement order would qualify as shout. The aggressive posture that riot control officers assume as well as the formations they employ would be a show of force. The employment of batons, tear gas grenades, or mace would be the shove level of force. If all else fails, the use of rubber buckshot, or beanbag rounds would be appropriate.

If it becomes clear that a police department is not following some escalation of force policy, protesters should realize that they are in a very dangerous situation. Murphy’s Laws of Combat state that “professionals are predictable, it is the amateurs that you have to worry about.” Police will only behave as professionally as they have to. If a department is not held accountable for its actions it will commit any number of evils. Especially when the media isn’t looking.

Batons are an indispensable riot control tool. Their presence is a strong psychological tool of subjugation. Guns, mace, fire hoses, and large bore launchers are intimidating, however the fear they produce in people’s minds is somewhat abstract. Most people have never been shot or maced and the idea of a fire hose isn’t all that terrifying. Everyone has been struck by a blunt object before and the pain is quite real to them.

While in the normal course of their duties, police often use extendable batons or side handle PR-24s the longer wooden batons are more desirable for riot control as they provide longer reach and a wider force block. They can be held in two hands and used to push back rowdy throngs.

Fire hoses have become somewhat passe` as they have the potential to produce many casualties and do not produce the same terror in crowds that teargas or shotguns loaded with less lethal rounds might. One only needs to look at Martin Luther King’s march through Birmingham, Alabama to see how dangerous they can be. Fire hoses are hard to control and require several officers to use. They are, however, quite effective at pushing large numbers of people.

Chemical munitions are very effective at challenging a crowds resolve. These agents come in many forms but all have similar effects- they bring about pain compliance by irritating the eyes, airways, and skin. They do carry with them a fair amount of liability. While modern chemical agents are not flammable, they can kill people who already have breathing problems like asthma. Their overuse can send healthy people into convulsions.

There are many methods of employing these agents. The hand thrown CS grenade is much like the military smoke grenade in that it utilizes a pull pin, safety spoon, and internal burning fuse. These are pyrotechnic devices. That fact discourages protesters form throwing them back as it can cause severe burns. It also precludes them from being used in structures or around flammable materials. A non-pyrotechnic alternative is aerosol area denial devices. These are similar to bug bombs. To use them one removes the cap, depresses the valve which locks in place, and throws it. Since these do not burn, there is a risk of them being thrown back.

37, 38, and 40 mm launchers can be used to project chemical munitions further than any officer could throw them. These are usually single shot large bore launchers. The launchers themselves are made by many companies like Arwen, Ramo, Heckler & Koch and Defense Technology. The rounds are produced by Smith & Wesson Labs and Fox Labs. 37 mm launchers and ammunition are available to the public for use as signaling devices. The 40 mm launchers or and ammunition are considered destructive devices by the BATFE and require registration and transfer fees when in the hands of citizens.

Some of the large bore tear gas projectiles are made for crowd dispersal and some are meant for use against barricaded suspects. Care should be taken not to use barricade penetrating rounds on crowds as there is a significant risk of causing casualties.

Large bore launchers are not limited to gas rounds. They can be used to launch rubber buck shot, flares, padded batons (affectionately referred to as Nerf rounds) and bean bags. Solid projectiles are considered destructive devices in the hands of civilians.

Shotguns can also be employed to launch less lethal projectiles like rubber buckshot or bean bags. The shotgun is the most versatile weapon in the police arsenal. In addition to less lethal rounds, the shotgun can be used to breach doors, fire lead buckshot and slugs.

The most common shotguns found in the hands of police are the Remington 870 and the Mossberg 500. Both are well made pump action shotguns. One reason that police would use pump shotguns in lieu of a semiautomatic is that the reduced power less lethal rounds might lack the recoil and pressure to work a semiautomatic action.

The possibility of a crowd employing violent tactics is always weighing on an incident commander’s mind. The use of deadly force is in these situations opens up a whole new world of liability. In the best of cases it will be unseemly to fire live ammunition into a crowd of mostly unarmed people. The media will undoubtedly call any slaying a massacre which is an automatic win for the protesters. At the same time it would be irresponsible to take away individual officer’s ability to defend themselves against deadly force.

Individual officers will usually carry side arms unless some department regulation prevents them from doing so in crowd control situations. At one time these policies were common as officers engaged in melees with protesters ran the very real risk of having their pistols taken away from them in the confusion. However, modern riot tactics coupled with triple retention holsters have largely done away with that risk. Triple retention holsters prevent a pistol from easily being stolen by someone who is facing the officer. They typically employ a snapping retention strap like other holsters, but still will not relinquish the pistol without the butt of the pistol being pushed towards the officer’s body and rotated back, then drawn smartly.

The most common police pistol is the Glock. Available in many different chamberings, 9 mm, .40 Smith & Wesson, 10 mm, .357 Sig, .45 GAP and .45 ACP, the Glock design is as versatile as it is reliable. The Glock has no external safeties, save a small lever on the trigger that discourages discharge while reholstering. Some can accept high capacity magazines that hold as many as 33 rounds.

The Glock is what is referred to as a Safe Action, meaning that its striker is held in a half cock position. When the trigger is pulled the striker is drawn back the rest of the way and released, firing the weapon. The lack of external safeties, coupled with the consistent trigger pull makes the Glock very user friendly for untrained or poorly trained people.

The trigger pull is long, but light ( about 5 lbs). This perceived deficiency has been blamed for many accidental police shootings. As a result, the New York City Police Department began requiring a 10 lb pull on their pistols. This trigger system, known as the New York Trigger, is mandated by many departments. Liability has also impelled some departments to install a trigger with a pull greater than 10 lbs, known as the New York Plus Trigger. While this information may seem overly technical I include it because it illustrates the burden that liability places on some police departments.

As I said earlier, it is bad PR for police to shoot live ammo into crowds. However, in the past armed people have infiltrated crowds, using them as cover and concealment. Snipers have also been known to use demonstrations as an opportunity to prey on police or demonstrators. To avoid having the riot line unloading their service pistols into the throng Police Snipers can be utilized. These specially trained officers will often be armed with a scoped bolt action rifle or semiautomatic rifle to observe and if necessary, kill armed threats in the crowd.

They will observe the crowd from a hide and report back on the crowd’s activities. Often times they will be visible on the rooftops as a show of force to discourage the rabble from any shenanigans. Police face many obstacles in crowd control situations. If the crowd is large, it is likely that they will outnumber the police. This is a dangerous situation for establishment forces. They must maximize their effectiveness by utilizing good tactics.

By making good use of choke points they can limit the frontage of the crowd that they are exposed to. The people in the middle of a crowd are irrelevant to the conflict unless they are throwing rocks or firing weapons. Following along this line of thinking, if police position themselves where the terrain forces people to bunch up, they can be more effective than they would in an open space, because they will only have to deal with a limited number of people at a time.

The ability to determine where a free speech zone is a boon to police. If police know or can dictate where a demonstration will take place they can arrange barriers in advance to maximize their advantage. They can make the protesters occupy places that will put them at a disadvantage. Downward slopes will allow the police to be on high ground looking down at protesters. Muddy fields will hinder the movement of the malcontents and discourage them from staying long. Forcing protesters to stand in linear danger areas like roads allow the police the ability to fire into a narrow and captive area without worrying about hitting bystanders or doing property damage.

Protests are taxing on a police department. They require extra man-hours. This costs the municipality money in the form of overtime pay (not to mention property damage). It fatigues officers, making them less effective. It also diverts police resources from important matters. Oftentimes police from neighboring jurisdictions have to be brought in to fortify a department’s numbers.

This is not necessarily a good thing, unless the police are the object of the protest. During a protracted conflict, overworked officers or commanders can make bad decisions that will jeopardize the safety of protesters, police, and bystanders. It is important for protesters to note that in a demonstration, the police, being better armed, control the situation. They hold in their hands the lives of everyone present by virtue of the fact that they are able to bring lethal force to bear. If a demonstration is taking place, it is because the police are exercising restraint. Malcontents should not assume that reliance on best practices is a constant. Police are human beings, when stressed, they can make bad decisions that can result in casualties.

In addition to being well armed, police have many advantages. They can choose the place where conflicts happen by designating free speech zones. They are mobile, and can project force remotely by virtue of a well established communications system. They have a unity of purpose, while the crowd is disunited. They also have on their side legal authority, the veneer of legitimacy, and established doctrine.

They do suffer some shortcomings. They are often outnumbered. They have constraints on the use of force. Reliance on a rigid command/control structure slows their reaction time. They rely on a form of communication that can be jammed and doesn’t work without electricity and batteries. They are constantly burdened by tort liability and the need to maintain a positive public image. Protesters are not burdened by these things. They are not limited by rules of engagement. Demonstrators can act spontaneously and autonomously. They can also blend in with the population if they don’t dress like Sid Viscous.

They are poorly armed and lack cohesion. They also have to deal with the criminal liability that stems from their actions.

Palestine and the US Empire

anonymous — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 17:46:29 -0700

Palestine shall be the watchword for the US empire.

The creation of a Palestinian State, to be recognized by the United Nations has been the subject of some controversy. The US has never exerted such pressure to prevent human rights developments.

Currently Israel is a military powerhouse and controls the borders into the shrinking areas of Palestine. Shrinking as Israeli border settlements continue develop, being defended by the IDF, pushing Palestinians deeper into the West Bank and the Gaza strip. The borders are pushed deeper into Palestine, despite efforts of the Palestinian land owners to defend the land and groups like the ‘Israeli Committee Against Home Demolition’(ICAHD) who rebuild the destroyed Palestinian homes.

The border settlement disputes caused the last breakdown of talks between Israel and Hamas. Israel refuses to stop Palestinian home demolition.

In the Middle East, Israel is a US ally. The US even pays Israel for a ally-ship status, $7 million dollars a day. Israel is in some ways an extension of US interests and policy.

As with Great Britain in South Africa, the Colonial State resists human rights to preserve a status of privilege. The striking similarities have caused the Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa to describe conditions in Palestinian as Apartheid.

Despite the oppressive conditions and aggressive behavior, the US has backed Israel. As the votes for Palestinian Statehood become more intense, the US has pledged to stop any efforts to allow this statehood. The reason for this is primarily the US and Israel’s close status. As this situation continues the US s bound up in supporting a violently oppressive system- that of Israel’s state security policy.

Israel desires a secure state and claims that Hamas would enact violence if given freedom. Under this pretense, Palestine remains under blockades, which have refused medical and food aid. The regular infrastructure of Palestine has been starved of construction material and other necessary supplies, since Israel claims these will be used to make bombs. This situation has created such awful conditions and deprivation.

As the world votes for human rights, there too rests the power of the US, invested at $7 million a day with Israel. All the arm twisting and power of an empire has thus far prevented human rights from taking hold, but if this fails, so too will the pretense of legitimacy for the US empire.

The Student Insurgent stands in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for liberation.

Prisons and Crime

The Student Insurgent — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 17:49:40 -0700

Pelican Bay Super-max Prison engaged in a hunger strike to improve conditions which began July 1st and was sustained until July 22nd. Thousands of prisoners across racial lines joined in and the hunger strike which spread across the California Prison system and as far as Chicago’s Joliet Prison in solidarity.

“Their demands include an end to long-term solitary confinement, collective punishment, and forced interrogation on gang affiliation. The prisoners have also stated that they are willing to give up their lives unless their demands are met.”- Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity website.

The Prisoners demands are a reminder that the State retains a gulag system, willing to deprive humans- supposedly in an attempt to reform ‘immoral’ actions. Prisoners understand for themselves the most necessary elements necessary to maintain their humanity, however for those on ’the outside’, it is necessary to be critical of the justice system as a whole.

The Insurgent recognizes that prisoners are captives in an unconsentual and cruel system. Down the line from Laws, to Judgement to ‘Corrections’, the whole system is rooted in inequality.

The process of laws tend to focus on low-income neighborhoods, because of large population and the ’efficiency’ of policing, neighborhoods composed of people of color are also especially targeted. These neighborhoods are also targeted, because they offer the least legal resistance and are most likely to feel an obligation to pay off a fine.

The Process of Judgement is given by primarily White Men, who by virtue of being judges necessarily have a significant education and usually legal career experience- in short they are out of touch. Passing judgement on the poor and people of color, is an especially insensitive and callous practice. These are no peers, nor proponents of the poor, it is hierarchical and outside the scope of the judge to understand the circumstances of judged. Furthermore the legal system is based on a dichotomy of ‘guilty and innocent’, this ignores the motivating factors, history and legacy of familial violence and offers only a moral judgement, which consequently, is unable to render any meaningful process of reform for its recipient.

The ‘Corrections’ are incapable to reform. These institutions are centers of deprivation. They are fueled today by low-wage work camps, many prisoners earning 15 cents an hour or less (~$5 a month). These low wages allow a high profit margin for corporations and a ‘stable’ workforce. This model of prison work is justified as ‘providing work skills to prisoners’- these, skills are irrelevant for their market application is undercut by the very place where they learned them and this encourages recidivism. Furthermore the application of a moral ‘right and wrong’ system is a tool of deprivation.

-Furthermore the movement towards so-called ‘green jobs’ is occurring in the prisons- with low-wage solar cell production, ‘green’ goods are sold at market value- produced by a prison population. The prisoners themselves enjoy the jobs as an opportunity to escape their cells, but are unable by any stretch of the imagination to fulfill their needs for services.

Prison teaches violence not social contract.

In an Insurgent Poll of Federal Prisons, based on personal interviews a formal questioning process and volumes of correspondence, we have identified five conditions which are most desirable changes within the Prison system and why.

Overcrowding. This is seen as the source which all other problems stem from, it exacerbates the existing conditions and problems.
Medical Care. Long lines, slow services and incompetence have ensured the prolonged suffering of many inmates. Numerous horror stories of worsening injuries have been reported and ignored by the Bureau of Prisons.
Payment for Employment. Wages are abysmal and they do not match the costs of services at a commissary, making prisoners reliant upon outside sources for basic needs.
Availability of Jobs. While many jobs are not mandatory, prisoners need an activity to occupy their time, jobs provide this.
Accommodations for Visitors. This means the prisoner and family being able to see each other. The ending of extreme requirements for visitation and the comfort of the visitor.

The basic humanity expressed during this process was overwhelming. Prisoners are caught in a wretched system which offers little for them in terms of education, opportunity or even basic safety.

Education is limited to outside programs coming in. The only reading material which remains stocked is the law books, because of a Federal requirement to keep up-to-date law books.

Opportunity for work is a difficult, prisoners must on the one hand sell themselves for a pitiful wage and on the other be competing against one another.

Basic safety is threatened by ’the politics’ on the yard. Race divisions created by guards and reinforced by gangs in prison, make even simple tasks of getting food difficult- a cut in line or a bump of a tray can quickly lead to a fight and a week in solitary confinement.

The whole questions of the prison must be thought of on a community level- what does safety mean and how do we get there. There are questions for a community, in responding to inner-community disputes and inter-community disputes. Bu the prison itself, even as it fills continues to reveal a deeply problematic system which is incapable of meeting the needs of its unwilling participants.

Special thanks to the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Blog

Taking Take Back the Tap All the Way to President Lariviere

The Student Insurgent — Thu, 26 May 2011 17:52:47 -0700

Eugene, OR - The Take Back the Tap (TBTT) campaign, a trademark of Food and Water Watch, being run on the University of Oregon campus by the Climate Justice League, finds support from President Lariviere to discontinue the sale, purchase, and distribution of bottled water.

“President Lariviere has final say over whether or not our policy becomes a reality on this university, so having his support is very exciting,” says Manny Garcia, a campaign coordinator.

This policy has already been endorsed by the Environmental Issues Committee and the University Senate Executive Committee and has support from over 1,700 students. During the meeting with the President, Take Back the Tap members discussed the benefits to the university from this policy and the logistics of its implementation.

“President Lariviere says that, if he had a magic wand, he’d gladly make all bottled water disappear,” says Garcia. “The President just has some reservations doing it without consulting the affected departments, which he and the rest of the campaign has been doing and will continue to do.”

President Lariviere thinks the Take Back the Tap campaign is important because it works to educate students about what is going on in the world around them and to think critically about the bigger picture, which is what they are at the University to do. Therefore, continuing education after the discontinuation will be a huge focus of the Take Back the Tap campaign.

Terra Smith, a Take Back the Tap member, states that, “policies like this one are being passed across the nation and around the world; it’s time the University of Oregon became a leader in this movement.”

The University of Oregon will be the first school in the Oregon University System and in the PAC 12 to implement a campus-wide discontinuation by passing this policy, making it a sustainability leader.

Southern Oregon University is moving to discontinue bottled water in 2012, and Stanford University has already removed bottled water from their dining halls and events. These policies mean that any exemption of athletics from the final policy or any delay of its implementation would mean that the University would not be the first in the Oregon University System or the PAC 12 to implement such a change.

“Efforts to delay or scale back the policy could eliminate our chance to the be a leader on the issue,” says Garcia “but we are sincerely excited to be first and we have the support on this campus to do the right thing.”

Every Bottle is 1/3 Oil

Bottled water production uses as much as 2,000 times more energy than it takes to produce tap water. A 20oz bottle of water requires 1/3 its volume in oil and 3 times its volume in water for manufacture, transportation, and disposal. When looking at the whole process it is much easier to see the quantities of oil that must go into the bottled water industry, which is a $11.5 billion a year industry.

Each year in the U.S., 17.6 million barrels of oil go into producing 29.8 billion plastic water bottles. Of all these bottles, only 2 in every 10 are actually recycled. The rest either go into the landfill or contribute to the North Pacific Garbage Patch, which is a floating mass of plastic in the Pacific Ocean that is twice the size of Texas and has up to 40 times more plastic than plankton.

Health is also a concern with bottled water because the EPA regulates tap water, which is tested 300 to 400 times a month depending on the population being supplied. However, bottled water manufacturers do testing on their own products and sources, but are not required to submit their reports to the FDA. Tests of bottled water straight off the shelf have found toluene, styrene, and bisphenol A (BPA).

Economics is another concern because bottled water costs up to 10,000 times more than tap water. Bottled water can costs consumers anywhere from $0.89 to $8.26 per gallon, while tap water costs $.002 per gallon. In Eugene the price of tap water is $.0018 per gallon.

Trapper Sale Invalidated

The Student Insurgent — Tue, 24 May 2011 17:54:00 -0700

EUGENE, OR - Conservation groups and community members today hailed a district court decisionthat declared the Trapper timber sale illegal. The timber sale, located in the McKenzie River watershed, the source of Eugene’s drinking water, would have logged 155 acres of never-before-logged mature forest in the Blue River area of the Willamette National Forest.

Federal Judge Tom Coffin ruled that in approving the timber sale the U.S. Forest Service violated a basic federal environmental law. Judge Coffin wrote:

“The public is entitled to be accurately informed of the impact of the proposed action on the [northern spotted owl] and to have a meaningful opportunity to weigh in on the proposalŠ[A]pproval of the Trapper Timber Sale were based on a factual inaccuracy and the public has yet to be informed of the actual findings.”

The Forest Service cannot move forward with logging until the agency makes a new decision that meets the requirements of the law.

“The McKenzie is Eugene’s backyard recreation paradise and its old forests filter our drinking water and shelter all kinds of wildlife,” says Kate Ritley, Executive Director of Cascadia Wildlands. “This logging proposal was flawed from the start when it was first issued a decade ago, and it’s high time we left it in the past.”

The Forest Service first proposed the timber sale in 1998 and has failed to address significant new information that has arisen since the agency issued a decision on the project in 2003. In the ten years since the project was planned, a pair of threatened northern spotted owls has taken up residence in the vicinity of the timber sale.

The court said the agency relied on a flawed analysis of impacts to endangered species and failed to respond to a scientific critique of the project.

“It is past time the Forest Service permanently cancel this outdated logging project,” says Doug Heiken, Conservation and Restoration Coordinator with Oregon Wild. “The agency has a choice between logging mature and old-growth forests or identifying common-sense projects that thin young forests to benefit wildlife, protect the forest, and create jobs. It should be an easy choice.”

The Trapper timber sale has been the subject of controversy before. On two past occasions, Cascadia Wildlands and Oregon Wild successfully challenged the species impacts opinion issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). USFWS is the federal agency in charge of recovering endangered species and had illegally issued opinions that would have allowed the Trapper timber sale to proceed despite negative effects to threatened wildlife.

“The fight to protect the ancient forests and wildlife found in the Trapper timber sale has been a long and hard one, but today that diligence has finally paid off,” says Susan Jane Brown, attorney with the Western Environmental Law Center.

The groups believe the Forest Service should be spending limited taxpayer dollars on projects that restore degraded landscapes, like restoration thinning in tree plantations resulting from past clear-cutting, decommissioning harmful roads, and enhancing fish and wildlife habitat.

The organizations are represented by Susan Jane Brown of the Western Environmental Law Center and Dan Kruse of Cascadia Wildlands.

Corporate Ownership of Human Life?

The Student Insurgent — Fri, 13 May 2011 17:55:43 -0700

The Student Insurgent condemns the mainstream media. A recent story in Time Magazine was defending fracking- that process of pumping unknown chemicals into the ground to force natural gas up. The leftover sludge invariably leaks into local ground water and food. With news stories like that, the discourse is all wrong.

Being forced to defend clean drinking water is like arguing for your life with someone who has a knife to your throat. The discourse then is about justifying your life, while you are already disadvantaged and if you lose, it’s your life on the line. That is not the premis for an rational discussion. Since human life requires food, water and sleep, threatening the source of water is like threatening one’s life. To lose the debate on fracking is to lose a long debate that requires one to justify their own life. Such a premis is not the basis of a valid discussion, for to lose in courts, politics or elsewhere is to give up the health of human life.

Essentially we must ask ourselves, are we willing to sacrifice people and land, to meet the needs of a privileged, wealthy communities that use the fossil fuels?

If we cannot have control over our water, food or lands. If all that exists can be held by patent, where does this break down?

In a dystopian future of being owned, it will not require guns, whips of chains. It will be in control of our very blood, genes and ownership of our very makeup. I sure wouldn’t want to be the supreme court justice that defends the private ownership of human life because ‘all the legal precedent was leading that way’.

Monsanto’s ownership and patenting of genes is likewise concerning. How long before human life is patented and owned? In a terrible experiment, one has to ask, if we continue to advance in prosthetics and nanotechnology. A doctor’s obligation to save lives will require the deployment of this technology on a patient who cannot pay. When the treatment is administered, the company will demand their patented product back and the person will say “No” and the court will find that technology, which cannot be returned will require payment. After a pause, the horror will sink in for the patient, not yet recovered from near-death, a horror that their life just entered indentured servitude. As time goes on the technology will advance and the tech will be administered at birth, as a vaccination and later the population will be enslaved, not with a whip or chain, but by the mere threat that their technology will shut down. At which point we must ask, how much do we value human life.

If we continue to allow the ownership of genes, the clock is ticking until human life become the property of corporations.

The alternative is to respect the collective ownership of land, of the human body, of the necessities of nutritious food, clean water, clean air and shelter to sleep. So in summary, Why corporate media, do you not examine the extension of your argument- that the sacrifice of our wild areas is the sacrifice of our lives. Oh yeah, because you’re sellouts. We cannot own others, we cannot own what we share with others, our ideas, our spaces and all the things necessary for our very survival.

The Insurgent stands in solidarity with resistance to the privatization of public goods. Solidarity Forever!

Burning Trees for Electricity in Lane County?

The Student Insurgent — Thu, 05 May 2011 17:59:39 -0700

Local Timber Baron, Seneca Jones, built a ‘biomass’ power-plant. Burning lumber, from Oregon’s timber sales and converting the energy to electricity. This facility was opened today, May 5, 2011 and from day one protests reigned in any notion that this plant was a good idea.

This lumber-fired generator was built with an exemption from air pollution regulation, over the concerns raised from the common knowledge: burning wood releases smoke. Despite the exemptions of Lane County, there has been wide-spread opposition from the Sierra Club to the Cascadia Forest Defense, that this plant will encourage the commodification, exploitation and destruction of Oregon forests, additionally degrading air quality. To put a stop to this facility, a protest of nearly forty shut the gate to the plant, by picket, banner drop and lock-down. Three were arrested in the process.

One person in lock-down was only visible from waist down, as he was locked under a station wagon with a bike lock. The whole entrance was shut down while seven police cruisers waited by and two fire crews were called in to cut out the protester. The police seemed on-edge, with assault rifles in their cars and a K-9 unit on call to protect the Seneca Jones Plant.

Lane Regional Air Protection Agency (L.R.A.P.A.) granted the exemption, it is widely known that they have been bought-off of the Jones. The plant is located just North the Eugene city limits, on highway 99. and is therefore regulated by Lane county. Lane county is already known for poor air quality, because of it’s place as the un-official grass seed capitol of the world. Adding to pollen, is the common practice of field burning, these combine for an already awful hay-fever season. Adding the ash and soot from a giant furnace will not improve conditions.

The Plant was hailed by regional planners as a job building success, to bring in money and burn up the pulp from the Seneca Saw mill. What is not mentioned, is the cut logs being used to stoke Seneca’s fire, state forests being cut and burned for electricity. There has been no plan for payment when respiratory diseases and cancer rates increase. The plant is located by the low income and expanding North Eugene neighborhood of River Road.

The Seneca three, shut down the plant for several hours and this is only day one.

UPDATE: The three arrested were all released separately from lane County Jail at 3pm.

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society blocks whaling (wins)!

The Student Insurgent — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 09:47:33 -0700

The Sea Shepherd program is a direct action network that opposes ocean based animal exploitation and they don’t take no excuses from no one. They won a victory against whaling fleets of Japan, who are being recalled, following the Tsunami in that region.-

The Nisshin Maru whaling factory ship made a pivotal course change north, as the Japanese Fisheries Agency announced on February 18th that the whaling fleet had been recalled for this season.

“The Nisshin Maru made a significant course change immediately after the Japanese government made it official that the whaling fleet has been recalled,” said Captain Alex Cornelissen from Sea Shepherd’s Bob Barker. “She looks like she’s going home!” The Bob Barker has been tailing the Nisshin Maru since February 9, making it impossible for the whalers to engage in their illegal slaughter in the southern ocean whale sanctuary.

The Japanese whaling fleet, engaged in commercial whaling inder the guise of scientific research, has had an extremely poor season being constantly harrassed and prevented from whaling in all but a few days.

The whaling fleet left Japan in early December, much later than usual. Perhaps a portent for the last commercial whaling season in the southern ocean. For the first time in seven years Sea Shepherd were been able to locate 2 harpoon vessels in the whaling fleet on New Year’s Eve before whaling had begun.

The chase of the Nisshin Maru had begun. While the Nisshin Maru fled from the three Sea Shepherd vessels, no whaling could occurr. Sea Shepherd used it’s fast intercept vessel, the Gojira, it’s helicopter, and weather balloons to help locate the whaling factory ship.

Along the way, Sea Shepherd found the whaling fleet resupply vessel, the Sun Laurel and requested it’s removal from the Antarctic Treaty Zone. The Captain complied and Sea Shepherd escorted the Sun Laurel out of the Antarctic Treaty Zone. The whaling fleet has breached the Antarctic Treaty on numerous occasions by refueling in the Antarctic treaty zone.

“Today we celebrate with you a victory for the oceans! Sea Shepherd has turned the tide and provoked a debate in Japan about whaling.” said Paul Watson on a blog post.

Greenpeace also celebrated the recall of the whaling fleet, “This historic announcement confirms what we all know: that Japan’s whaling serves no purpose whatsoever and the fleet has no business in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary,” said Junichi Sato, Executive Director of Greenpeace Japan. “All the whaling programme has produced is a stockpile of thousands of tonnes of frozen whale meat, the waste of billions of Japanese taxpayer’s yen, and a culture of corruption and scandal. An early return of the whaling fleet is not enough – Japan’s whaling ships should never leave port again.”

Greenpeace is demanding that Japan’s government finally end its commercial whaling programme and re-open an investigation into corruption scandals inside the industry. The Fisheries Agency of Japan recently admitted that five of its officials who had sailed with the whaling fleet to oversee its activities, had accepted expensive gifts of whale meat from the fleet’s operators.

“The Japanese public doesn’t want to be force-fed whale meat or be forced to bankroll a corrupt and dying industry,” added Sato. “Greenpeace is urging the Japanese government to not only investigate the whale meat scandal we exposed three years ago, but also start taking real action towards protection of the world’s oceans”.

Tensions between Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd and their different approaches to nonviolent direct action and resourcing the campaign to stop commercial whaling have perhaps hindered the campaign at various times. Not least in the lack of co-operation in locating the whaling fleet in past seasons. Now it seems at last all anti-whaling activists can celebrate the end of commercial whaling in the southern ocean for this season and perhaps a final end.

Paul Watson summed up his earnest hope in a post on Saturday February 19, 2011:

“The Japanese government is posturing and talking big in an effort to save face. The reality is that the Japanese whaling industry is an antiquated, dying industry that has no place in the country of Japan in the 21st Century.”

“In 1977, Sea Shepherd fought the Australian whalers at Cheynes Beach in Western Australia. It was a bitter and angry confrontation. In 1978, Australia ended whaling, and is now the leading nation on this planet in its defense of the great whales.

“This is my great hope for Japan,” said Captain Watson. “Like Australia, a whaling nation evolving to a state of compassion for the great whales, and I know that when the Japanese embrace a cause, they embrace it with a steadfast and determined loyalty. I predict that Japan will be one of the leading conservationist nations on the planet in the coming years, and the cessation of whaling in the Antarctic Ocean will be the place where it will have begun.”

“The whale war in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary is over. The whales have won!”

The Student Insurgent stands in solidarity with efforts to defend endangered wildlife and preserve natural ecosystems.

thanks to: [https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2011/03/12/18674424.php]

Pro Union Rally outside the Eugene, OR, Hilton.

The Student Insurgent — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 09:50:14 -0700

Insurgent reporter a union rally in solidarity with Wisconsin at the Eugene Hilton. Following a march from the University of Oregon!

“There is major rally at the Eugene Courthouse, NOW”-Steve M.(5:39pm)

With signs saying:

‘Wages are too damn low’
‘you bet your ass we’re the working class’
‘Go Democracy!!!’
‘we’re sick and tired of being sick and tired.’
‘Union busting is killing our American dream’
‘Ducks for workers’
‘We are Wisconsin’

Numbering in the Dozens (plural), with these signs and speeches on a megaphone, the workers called to defend the right to collective bargaining. The crowd has swelled to hundreds! The event was organized by AFSCME and the University Graduate Student Union the GTFF

The Student Insurgent stands in solidarity with the protests around the world for self determination and efforts to make a better life.

Support a General Strike in Wisconsin!

The Student Insurgent — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 09:51:48 -0700

What Do We Face?

Walker’s bill, if passed, will strip public-sector unions of the right to collectively bargain regarding all workplace issues other than basic wages. Workers would no longer have a legal say in their pensions, their healthcare plans, workplace safety, or any other pertinent issues. Without collective bargaining, we have no legally-recognized way to influence how we are treated at our jobs. Workers with access to a union have an opportunity to make their workplaces more democratic. Think about how much time we dedicate to work and work-related activities. With so much of our lives spent in undemocratic workplaces, how could we have real democracy in the rest of our lives?

The impact of Walker’s bill reaches far beyond unions and public servants. Stripping public workers of their right to bargain affects the rights of everyone who works for a living. This attack on workers’ rights will not stop with the public sector or with Wisconsin. These anti-union bills are spreading around the country from Indiana to Ohio to Nebraska in an effort to serve the corporate elite by lowering labor costs and weakening all labor.

What Does Any of This Have to Do With A General Strike & With Wisconsin?

In the recently released prank call by a journalist pretending to be billionaire David Koch, Scott Walker said, “All week there’s been 15-30,000 [protesters] a day, but I remind our lawmakers that there’s 5.5 million people in this state and just because a bunch of guys who can jump off work because of their union[s]…doesn’t mean the rest of your people are with you.” The truth is that these protesters are not “guys who can jump off work” – they are students, activists, union and non-union workers from the public and private sectors, Wisconsin families, and members of the religious community. Additionally, unionized and non-unionized workers both risk job security by taking time to protest. Essentially, Governor Walker doesn’t think that the protesters represent the rest of the state. He thinks that the majority of Wisconsin agrees with his attempt to strip workers of basic rights. He is wrong. Despite facing opposition from millions, Walker still won’t budge from his position on this issue. It will take something bigger from the unions, and from the working-class as a whole: a general strike.

A general strike will show Walker that millions of people are willing to fight his agenda

A General Strike: The Ultimate Tool of Change

What exactly is a general strike? A general strike is a strike involving workers across multiple trades or industries that involves enough workers to cause serious economic disruption.

In essence, a general strike is the complete and total shutdown of the economy. A general strike can last for a day, a week, or longer depending on the severity of the crisis, the resolve of the strikers, and the extent of public solidarity. During the strike, large numbers of workers in many industries (excluding employees of crucial services, such as emergency/medical) will stop working and no money or labor is exchanged. All decisions regarding the length of the strike, the groups of workers who continue working, and demands of the strikers are decided by a strike committee.

Past victories won by general strikes are:

Chicago, New York, Cincinnati, and elsewhere, 1886 – First victory in the fight for an eight-hour day
Toledo, OH, 1934 – First successful unionization of the auto industry.
San Francsico, CA, 1934 – Unionization of all West Coast ports of the United States.
Poland, 1980 – Began the process of democratic reforms that led to the end of Soviet control over the country.
Egypt, 2011 – Brought the 30-year reign of an autocratic despot to an end.

If enough of us act together, we’ll see some serious changes, and quick. That’s the “general” part of a general strike. We’re all divided up by race, religion, gender, and political affiliation. In a general strike, people come together in large numbers across those divisions and unite around our struggles as workers. If enough of us stand together and stop work, Walker’s bill will be defeated – even if it passes! If enough of us are united, WE can decide the outcome.

Who should participate and how

A general strike against Walker would begin the process of rebuilding a strong labor movement in the United States. Since the U.S. plays such an important role in the global economy and world political system, this could also invigorate workers’ struggles around the planet. To make it happen will require participation from many people across industries, across unions, and across the country.

Public Workers

The South Central Federation of Labor, a federation of over 97 labor organizations representing 45,000 workers, has endorsed to educate and prepare for a general strike. If your local is part of a different federation or district council, contact their Executive Board and your members and start your preparations for a strike immediately.

Union Members and General Strikes

Trade unions enable large groups of people a powerful, unified voice, from the local and its officers, representatives, stewards, and negotiators up to the level of a union, such as AFSCME. It may be difficult to get your union officials to agree to a general strike. Labor law is set up in the United States to discourage unions from standing together. Your union’s officials will be afraid of possible legal ramifications. They will also be afraid that no other unions will endorse the call or actually carry out the strike. Your union may have contractual agreements that union officers are worried about. Be prepared for these objections. Remind everyone that if the labor movement does not take a stand to stop Scott Walker today, there may not be a labor movement tomorrow. There are risks to building a general strike, but the much bigger risk is that Walker will accomplish his anti-union agenda.

Talk to your co-workers about the general strike. If you are meeting soon, there is a sample resolution to be found at madison.iww.org that you can bring to your local. If you aren’t meeting soon, talk to your coworkers and union stewards about holding an emergency meeting; most local unions have rules that allow for these types of meetings in their bylaws. Help educate your fellow workers by sharing this pamphlet and the news. Form an education and preparation committee to help organize your local.

If it seems that your union is opposing the desires of their rank-and-file to hold a strike, it is possible to act on a general strike without the consent of these leaders, as long as enough rank-and-filers stand together. A strike committee can be formed by a few elected representatives from each participating local who then gather into a larger coordinating body. These representatives should be elected by the rank-and-file members of each local and they should be able to be recalled by a majority vote of the workers they represent at any time. This body would have to hold together when (not if, when) one group is attacked or encouraged to strike out on its own.

If your shop decides not to go out, you can still strike “on the job”, that is, slow down or halt production through clumsiness, ignorance, or “work-to-rule”: following the rules so carefully that nothing gets done.

How the rest of us can prepare

In order to successfully conduct a general strike we must fully prepare ourselves for all possibilities.

The first step is to get as many workers to commit to the strike as possible. This needs to be done beforehand; not the day before the strike, and not after the strike has begun. We need to be able to trust the commitments of other workers, regardless of union affiliation. Talk about the general strike with people at rallies, at work, online, and at home with your friends, family, and neighbors. Ask your community about practical ways that they can aid a potential general strike or pass around the included leaflet to community groups in the area. Consider preparing a phone tree or online contact list to keep your friends, family, and fellow workers connected and prepared for emergencies.

Bring cardboard, markers, sticks, and tape to make picket signs; write protest chants and songs; bring bullhorns from your workplace or home to the street. There is already a support system in the capitol building for hungry and injured protesters, but we need to be prepared to expand these systems to a larger scale. Being on strike is exciting, but it is also difficult and tiring. When a general strike happens, workers will need to push each other to stay resolute, support each other when times are hard, and be able to ask for and accept help when they need it. When you are tired, hand your sign to someone else and get some rest. Protesters at the capitol have created amazing mutual support networks over the past weeks through little more than word-of-mouth, and if we continue to work together these networks can only get stronger.

Why rank and file solidarity is important for a general strike

It is important in a general strike to support other workers regardless of their positions in the workforce (unionized, non-unionized, public or private)– to build the kind of relationship where an injury to one group of workers is an injury to all. Within our locals & unions, personal rivalries and pettiness can erode unity and the ability to work together for common gains. Groups can be pitted against one another during a general strike―city workers versus workers in more rural or isolated areas, or, as Gov. Walker attempted (but failed) to do, police and fire departments against the rest of the municipal workforce. When one group of workers is pitted against another, the strength the movement is in trouble. In a general strike, rumors about a lack of solidarity and inappropriate acts may be circulated by our governor and anti-worker segments of the media to deliberately demoralize and divide the participating groups. We must make an effort to not believe everything we hear―to go to the source and get facts before reacting.

Solidarity means uniting everyone: union and non-union, native citizens and immigrants, men and women, white and black and brown. A labor movement that turns away any worker isn’t anything but a powerless social club. We must believe all other workers can have a higher standard of living and gain the power and respect they deserve on the workplace. We will need to seek out individuals, organizations and community groups of all colors and creed. Their fight is our fight!

Solidarity makes us stronger and it spreads quickly. People are impressed by it and drawn to learn about and support our causes. Love really is stronger than hate, and many working families throughout labor battles in the past have been inspired by positive support from all corners of the working population. “Workers united will never be defeated,” we chant―for good reason.

ASUO President's Veto Upheld, OSPIRG chapter to be RE-Funded

The Student Insurgent — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The President of the Associated Students of the University of Oregon (ASUO), Vetoed the ACFC Budget (Athletic & Contracts Finance COmmittee, a budget committee of the Student Senate)- a budget that did not include funding for the OSPIRG- the Student run, Public Interest Research Group.

The vote was narrow and the discussion involved threats of resignation. But OSPIRG will receive an additional hearing, almost guaranteed to receive funding. While the ACFC budget currently only contains $5,000, the committee plans to renegotiate a contract with local transportation bureau (Lane Transit District, LTD) and possibly other contracts.

OSPIRG has been a chapter without funding for three years and has continued to function with the aid of other state chapters. This funding will go towards a chapter organizer and mostly towards a office staff in Salem who advocates on public policy issues and a federal staff who lobbies in D.C.

It is worthy of note that the University of Oregon chapter of OSPIRG, was the the original chapter of the PIRGs: Public Interest Research Groups. Which operate in many states.

The stated reason for dismissal three years ago was ‘repeated services’. There was serious conservative pressure against the group; but the funds which are used (student funds) cannot be allocated based on the content of action, only upon whether services were rendered or not- a ‘viewpoint neutral’ decision. This question of service was ignored, in the original decision, but viewpoint neutrality must govern the dispersal of student funds.

The PIRGs have been accused of being reformists, hierarchical and even oppressive. These claims are of merit in deciding to participate in such a group, but they have no bearing upon funding.

The Student Insurgent Stands in Solidarity with efforts of political action, generally.

Forest Service's Own Scientists Question the Relevance of Contested Trapper Timber Sale

Cascadia Wildlands — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

“Cascadia Wildlands and Oregon Wild are currently in litigation over the legality of the Trapper timber sale on the McKenzie Ranger District of the Willamette National Forest. The timber sale was originally planned in 1998 as an experiment and proposes to aggressively log 150 acres of mature and old-growth forests above Blue River. New information not considered in the environmental review, including information about imperiled species, compelled the lawsuit. The plaintiffs are being represented by attorneys at Cascadia Wildlands and Western Environmental Law Center.

While reviewing court documents in the case, plaintiffs discovered a memo from prominent scientists at the Pacific Northwest Research Station to the Forest Service questioning the relevance of the project today. From the memo: “Research investment in learning from the Trapper units has been minimal. Therefore, we do not see substantial lost research investment or research opportunity by foregoing the Trapper units.”

The Eugene Weekly covered this story in its most recent edition and disclosed more details of the memo. Efforts by plaintiffs and the Forest Service to encourage Seneca Jones Timber Co., the purchaser of Trapper, to pursue less controversial timber volume in lieu of logging the timber sale has been unsuccessful. Please take action today encouraging the Forest Service to cancel the reckless timber sale.”

The Student Insurgent stands in Solidarity with efforts to defend out wildland areas!

Libertarian Mixed Feelings on Wisconsin

anonymous — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 10:04:19 -0700

From C4SS- Center for a Stateless Society:

Anarchists want to abolish the state, with all functions now performed by the state being performed by voluntary associations. So naturally, we object to “public employment” — the funding of services through compulsory taxation — in principle.

The question is, how do we get there from here?

Some things currently done by tax-funded government employees are legitimate functions that would still exist in some form in a stateless society. Mail delivery is one example. Education would no doubt be different in many ways in a free society — no compulsory attendance laws, and no processing of human resources for the corporate state. But teaching children is an important function in any society, and much that public school teachers do now would probably carry over without much change. Even some of what police do, like stopping violent crime and apprehending aggressors, would still be necessary — but without laws against victimless crimes, or any of the thuggish behavior regularly chronicled by people like Radley Balko.

Many government employees perform such functions in an environment where the state has coopted the function and crowded out alternative ways of organizing it.

If we view the state as preempting necessary functions, and interposing itself between the providers of services and recipients of those services, our ultimate goal is to devolve such functions into the realm of voluntary association. Removing the parasitic middlemen, who have inserted themselves into the relationship between service providers and recipients, is an important part of this process. Anything that strengthens the hand of public sector workers against the commanding heights of the state, also weakens the hand of the state and its plutocratic allies.

It’s hardly obvious, despite Scott Walker’s rhetoric, that reduced bargaining power for public sector workers will translate directly into reduced taxes. The upper management of government bureaucracies typically justify cuts in pay, benefits and staffing levels for those actually providing services in the name of saving the taxpayers’ money — and then more than eats up any savings with management featherbedding, junkets and “motivational retreats” for themselves. To the extent that public sector unions fight attempts at downsizings, speedups and cutting corners, they may actually be defending the interests of service recipients at the expense of their bureaucratic bosses.

In the case of public schools, anything that strengthens the hands of school administrators and education departments at the expense of the autonomy of rank-and-file teachers, also serves to impose the authoritarian educationist dogma on all of them. The biggest victims of such policies are frequently, not incompetents and illiterates, but those who teach their pupils to question authority and undermine the official ideology of the corporate state. The best teachers I ever had in the belly of the beast, the ones who led me furthest astray from orthodoxy, spent most of their time looking over their shoulders. If anything’s guaranteed to weed out such mavericks, it’s removing their job security and turning them into at-will employees at the mercy of idjut principals and superintendents.

The same is true of other taxpayer-funded services. It’s often the production workers who fight hardest against senior management attempts to downsize service staff and skim off the savings for themselves. An at-will worker with no union contract is a lot less likely to stick her neck out as a public advocate against the management of a post office or VA hospital.

And frankly, Walker’s attempts to depict public sector workers as privileged leeches for their pay and benefit levels rankles me more than a little, given my own status as a blue collar worker. The compensation and bargaining power enjoyed by public sector workers were once shared by a major share of private sector workers, before people of Walker’s ilk busted private sector unions a generation ago.

So while I object to government employment in principle, I’m uneasy about the standard libertarian framing of the issue with rank-and-file government workers as the villains and Walker as the good guy. If it’s a mistake to defend government workers as such, the people who rally behind Wisconsin’s state employees at least do so on sound instincts.

They perceive, rightly, that Walker wants to break public sector unions not out of any principled attachment to free markets, but because they’re unions. Unions, such as they are, are one of the few remaining vestiges of a middle class way of life, in an age of stagnant real wages and skyrocketing CEO wages and corporate profits. Walker, like other establishment Republicans, serves the interests of an unholy alliance between big government and big business. If you want to know which master’s voice he obeys, just pay attention to who he takes calls from.

Our goal is to replace the present system with a different way of doing things — not to vilify those caught up in it.

Racism Is Real: A Quiet Cruelty

Cimmeron Gilespie — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 10:08:34 -0700

UO President La Riviere was walking with two aids towards the EMU, engaged in a discussion about racism at the University of Oregon. The aids informed him that racism is not a serious issue at the University of Oregon, that “we take it very seriously, for our staff and students. Just this week I had a meeting with prospective students, almost twenty seven of them. We care about the community of DIversity, we are even letting six of them in…” Nobody questioned this, nobody was astounded that in reaching out to students, only one quarter will enroll. Why is it difficult for students of color? Why is it difficult for the University to overcome its lily white complexion?

Racism is not found in the same wide scales and dramatic blows that Bull Conner dealt in the 1960s, but we all know it exists in the wage disparity and other systematic measurable inequalities. We continue to find the situations which at their face appear full of racism, but which we can rationalize as some benign thing, but as laws can be a harbor of injustice, so too can just laws be carried out with injustice- look to the prisons for this to be evidenced. A society cannot continue to legally or socially exclude it’s people, we cannot live in perpetual fear, living that fear in enclaves and pretending the world will not change around us.

We must embrace different cultures, but can still embrace our own cultural heritage; we can defend our uniqueness, but we must with the same vehemence condemn the exclusion of people from society for different religious or cultural backgrounds. We must embrace each other or we will have failed the test of time. No person need abandon their cultural heritage to appreciate another’s. This is a predominantly ‘white’ campus, a campus that does not reach out to students of color, does not empower its own diversity. The institutions of administration tolerate differences, perhaps, but do not work towards empowerment. If even the educational circles cannot reflect empowerment, the rest of society is overwhelmingly condemned to cultural ignorance and social inhibition.

When a people are deprived of the cultural experiences different from their own, they betray their own potential. This does not exclude the opportunity of an individual’s cultural expression or forming enclaves- quite the opposite, it calls for cultural celebration to explore similitude. The idea of cultural empowerment ought not exclude the growth of others and indeed should seek actively to empower other communities, building solidarity over our mutual human desires for expression and our mutual resistance to oppressive systems- like Imperialism, corporate domination of our lives and environmental racism.

As a society and for a campus, which faces the quiet cruelty, born in the numbers of students of color and lack of diversity among backgrounds. We as people must face the facts, that our behavior towards one another and as much as our attendance at events of empowerment reflects our real sentiments and that we need to examine our behavior. As a campus we charge for cultural events, impose restrictive codes and when we impose bureaucracy on cultural growth, this is racism. At the University of Oregon, all the ’ethnic’ non-white identities, including international students and those of unknown status, equal less than one third of the student population (as of Fall term, 2010, according the registrar). This should be appalling, that students of color, are excluded for reasons of tuition, university outreach and support as well as a culture on the campus which other students play a role in. But it doesn’t stop at the students, there are low margins of faculty, support staff and administration of color as well. How can students of color be welcomed, when the campus makes a clear statement in hiring- that persons of color will not be supported.

Reflections of racism are found on campus, as elsewhere, among its communities and networks. The lack of solidarity is appalling and there is a history of awkwardness in behavior that perpetuates this.

It takes time to acculturate one’s self into unfamiliar communities, as well as for communities to trust one another, the level of understanding necessary to overcome the awkwardness and quiet racism takes longer. Make no mistake however, overcoming the sense of awkwardness is the responsibility of the empowered communities, the allies in struggle and the more numerous ‘ethnic’ group Caucasian students. Once these relationships are established, the hard work begins of collaboration and mutual empowerment.

Breaking the cycle of quiet racism, the cruel devil, which isn’t the flaming rants of rabid white supremacists, is no easy task. If this university is to overcome quiet racism, it will take an increase in sheer numerical value of students, faculty and staff of color- with a focus on empowerment and retention. Early anti-oppression crash-courses, ‘courses’ plural, because it is all to easy to sit through a lecture and never challenge one’s self to break cycles of ingrained racism. Breaking internalized racism takes time and personal, internal, confrontation. The anti-oppression courses are necessary and of critical importance to a balanced education. Simply leaving it up to students to create a desirable campus will not succeed, the Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity (OIED) needs to be given the tools to make a real standardized improvement across the scholastic system. This improvement is relative to different departments, but requires concerted efforts. Efforts to outreach to students of color by peers and more institutionally with support networks is a significant key to empowerment a recently McClatchy article finds (see below).

We cannot afford to pretend that racism does not exist on our campus and be honest- in our hearts, unless we challenge it. We cannot pretend that we do not look away and may hear the stereotypes of social roles, judgments if even sometimes jokingly. This is racism. We need to challenge racism and it’s legitimacy in ourselves as in those around us, to command that voice to not only be silenced but to be replaced by one of cultural embrace. We cannot continue to perpetuate an institution of quiet cruelty, we must create an environment of welcoming and supporting communities. We need to recognize the intellect, skill and sheer guts to come to the University of Oregon as a student of Color. We need to demonstrate solidarity, by attending events and meetings of one another, supporting faculty and staff of color if for no other reason than our own sense of dignity by recognizing the dignity of others as people. In attending events, deliberately not exercising white privilege, by commanding safe space, but respecting the space and its occupants. Respect is shown by not speaking over communities of color or speaking in diminutives, be respectful and show support.

Post Script

As the author of this article I am ‘white’ by heritage. I no more choose this that an African American choose their skin color. I cannot therefore speak for communities of color about their oppression, but I will speak of the oppression itself as I see it and experience it- from a position of privilege. I recognize that I cannot speak for communities of color, but I will say I can sense an almost palpable sensation of terrible awkwardness, that becomes behavior, repeated over and over. I have witnessed this again and again on campus, a sensation that I myself, in moments of cowardice, have felt. The culmination of this feeling is both disempowering to the communities it targets, it is also not empowering among the communities who perpetuate it, walking away from such interactions knowing they have not been supportive. The nauseating frequency of such events normalizes them and only allows racism to build and be perpetuated. The sum culmination of these experiences creates a quiet cruelty, not a single student is responsible, solely and that is the problem. No one person can be called out, or held accountable, unless every student, individually recognizes that this is oppression and it must be challenged. That we are perpetuating this oppression and we must challenge ourselves and others to step up and join communities of color in an effort of empowerment and solidarity. To break the silence and tolerate no longer the quiet cruelty.

News From Madison Wisconsin labor protests

anonymous — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 10:10:25 -0700

The Student Insurgent has been following closely the protests in Madison. As the cold temperatures drop and the people simply cannot bear to remain at the protest, still an enduring crowd of around 20,000 came out and Unions talking about a general strike. The Student Insurgent’s very own KC has given us the latest of what’s going on, with secondary confirmations from demonstrator Ryan Nelson.

“Right now in Wisconsin public workers from across the state, supported by private sector workers, students young and old, retirees, labor activists and more, are holding unprecedented protests in Madison against the utterly dictatorial move by Governor Scott Walker to gut their collective bargaining rights.

After giving $140 million to special interest groups in January, many of whom donated to Republican campaigns and to the Governor himself, Walker is now attempting to strip Wisconsin’s state workers of their hard-won right to collectively bargain over the conditions of their labor under the guise of filling a claimed $137 million budget shortfall."-IWW

“The protests continue with sustained crowds of over 20,000. There are many groups working together and most are serious and organized, it’s all completely non-violent. There are some student groups that are exploring the ideas of how to defend themselves and the protest if the state militia is called in, but those discussions are far from definitive and some of the students having those discussions are not experienced- with poor consensus skills and gender dynamics. But the real people, the Unions, they are serious- enough to talk and order a GENERAL STRIKE.- Now there’s a conversation that hasn’t been had in a long time.”

“The following motions were passed by the SCFL Monday February 21st:

Motion 1: “The SCFL endorses a statewide general strike, possibly for the day Walker signs his ”Budget Repair Bill,” and requests the Education Committee immediately begin educating affiliates and members on the organization and function of a general strike.”

Motion 2: “The SCFL goes on record as opposing all cuts contained in Walkers ”Budget Repair Bill,” including, but not limited to, curtailed bargaining rights and reduced wages, benefits, pensions, funding for public education and Medicare.”

Please pass supporting motions in your council and organize committees to begin educating affiliates and members on the organization and function of a general strike."-IWW

“The Unions of Iron and steel workers are there and even the police. This is the only time I have ever gotten a solidarity fist from a cop. There is an info shop and all the food is taken care of. There was some talk of if regulating food was necessary- but what is the worst that could happen- theft, its free. In addition there is enough food going around to have a free bought- stand in the demonstration. But because it is in the middle of the capital, there are bathrooms and running water. There has been aid coming in from around the world, most notably from- Egypt, South Korea, South America and Russia, alot of Pizza.”

“Nobody is kidding themselves, it is only a matter of time before the people get kicked out. We are squatting the capital. But for now, the democrats have stalled the vote and the people have control of the capital building. We don’t know how long this will go on, but there are limited outcomes- either the state capitulates and drops the bill or there will be a bloody massacre.”

While we wait over Wisconsin. Many other states are undergoing equally desperate situations- in Tennessee, Indiana, Ohio and other places the budget battle rages.

From Ohio, one civic employee writes “writing from the heartland of Ohio….this morning…pouring rain temp. about 40 degrees hundreds of people show up at a town hall meeting in downtown Dayton…which a Republican Ohio Senator was having by “INVITE ONLY” to inform her constitutents about SB 5 which is to strip unions of their collective bargaining rights….

Never in my life I have I witnessed anything like this…I have participated in thousands of marches, protests, etc. but this time….this time was much different…

City buses driving by with passenger’s honking their horns in support….Police in cruiser’s coming by and honking their horns and waving in support of the protester’s….City Sanitation worker’s driving huge dump trucks coming by and honking in support, Ambulance driver’s giving us the peace sign….it was absolutely awesome….

It is on….really on….and I am so damn happy! People are ignited!”

This is growing nationally, there are rumors of ’tea bagger’ provocateurs, pushing demonstrators in Wisconsin and bus loads of conservative opposition people coming from Utah. Busses left from Salt Lake just a day ago, to ‘fight the war on unions’. Temperatures are predicted to drop to 16 degrees F. tonight and rise to 36 degrees, with showers, tomorrow. This situation is growing in intensity, despite cold and wind and weather, somehow they all stick together.

The Student Insurgent stands in solidarity with the demonstrators, who are defining the nation, and defending all our rights. As the IWW put it “We extend Solidarity to all workers, union or non-union, fighting back against the Capitalist class trying to return us to conditions not found since the Industrial Revolution” simply put, Solidarity Forever.

Fundamentals of a Great Bike Trip

Jonathan Fryer — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 10:14:42 -0700

By picking up the Insurgent, we’ve already established that you are pretty rad. So you just might be interested in this ‘radical’ activity; riding a bike. But I’m not talking about going for a ride on a nice day or commuting to school or work, I’m talking about multi-day long distance riding; touring.

So you find out that you will be having some free time coming up, it could be just a couple of days or a couple of years, doesn’t matter, and you decide that you need to get out of town and do something different. Funds are limited, but you still want to have a great trip. When a car is not an option and the cost of a train or airplane ticket is out of reach, it can seem like there are not that many opportunities to pursue. Your bicycle, that trusty friend of yours that is with you on your errands and that takes you along the river path on one of those first days of spring, can be your ticket out of this little corner of the Willamette Valley and give you an experience unlike any other.

For some bike touring is all about being free from the use of fossil fuels while taking in the landscape, for others it is represents a challenging and rewarding physical activity, and for numerous people, it is about an inexpensive vacation. A bicycle trip is all three of those and more. There is a feeling of accomplishment when realizing that distance between you and your starting point was made entirely by bicycle. Biking through the landscape allows for time to observe all of your surroundings, as well as reflect upon your personal thoughts. Living off of a bicycle is also a minimal impact activity that allows for a great degree of mobilization without the direct consumption of precious oil. The great freedom of long distance bike riding allows for unlimited avenues to explore. Be it a trip to the coast and back or a six month venture through Central America, any multi-day bike trip can prove to be a great adventure.

So you’ve now decided you need to go on a bike trip (perhaps for spring break?), but have questions about what all it takes for a successful adventure. Here are the major important elements of bike touring that you may want to consider.

Bike

Almost any bike will do, really. A big thing to keep in mind is that what ever the subject, someone has done more with less, you don’t need to worry about having a nice brand new touring bike for your trip. Riding a bike all day with a backpack is no fun, and can cause discomfort and damage to your back and shoulders. It is important to choose a bike that has the necessary holes in the frame to support a rack. For longer trips, a rack with three supports on either side is optimal but not necessary.

The bike should fit you. That is to say that you should be comfortable riding the bike for a long duration of time. A general rule of thumb is that the top tube of the bike (bar between seat and handlebars) should be about an inch below your groin when standing over the bike. From there, adjust seat, handle bars, brake hoods, ect to positions that are comfortable for long rides.

Ensuring that the bike is in good mechanical shape (brakes and gears function properly, seat and other adjustable components are tightened securely, ect) will leave less of a chance for trouble in the future. It’s up to the individual bikers discretion as to how much mechanical work or new parts someone wants to put into their bike. Just keep thinking, someone has done more with less.

Route

While spontaneous routes that take you weaving through the country side can provide more of a sense of adventure, it is always essential to have a map of the areas you are planning on going through. Departments of Transportation and many tourism bureaus will provide you with free maps upon inquiring on their websites. Many states even employ a bicycle coordinator position that can provide you with traffic data and grade of highways throughout the entire state on a map.

A good average day of riding for many bicycle tourists starting out is 50 miles in a day, but once on the road, you will know what your preferences or capabilities are.

When there are no camping sites or motels abound it’s time to consider asking a home or business for permission to stay on their property for the night, or find a good place to ‘stealth camp’. Many locals are accepting that you are a decent-hearted traveler just needing a place to pitch a tent.

Gear

Once you establish that you have a rack, bags are necessary. This can mean bungeeing plastic bags to the rack finding used bags, or buying bags new. For DIY enthusiasts, panniers can be made from plastic buckets, crates, or sewn from cloth, but that will have to be a different article. Beyond sufficient storage capacity on your bicycle and the recommended tools, the rest of the gear reflects the personality of your trip. To bring a stove or not to bring a stove? Stay in motels or camp every night? These questions are left to the individual and gear lists should reflect personal comforts.

Clothing

Of course there will always be variability with location, season, and climate, but there are two things important things to consider when packing clothing for a bike trip: layers and synthetic fibers. You may have experienced this riding through town; you wake up and have to ride your bike to school but it’s a cold January morning in Eugene and raining; you put on a heavy sweater, then a rain jacket, and start riding. Two minutes into the ride your sweating, but disrobing now would be a hassle due to traffic or being late to class. The result: you get to class sweaty with your cotton t-shirt just as wet as it would have been if you were riding with it in the rain. Solution? proper layering and never including cotton in your bike touring wardrobe.

Maintenance

Having a spare tube and patch kit are a must, as well as a few tools, however you don’t need to worry about packing a whole repair shop on your rack. In addition to the tube and patch kit, it is smart to have the tools necessary to make adjustments to the different components of your bike. Usually you can get by with just one Allen wrench set, but be sure that you can adjust your seat, handlebars, and stem to get a comfortable fit. After riding for the first long day you can begin to feel where minor adjustments might be helpful. Spare spokes and a chain tool can be useful to have with you, but importance can vary depending on the type of trip you plan to embark on. Be aware of your proximity to bike shops on your route and plan accordingly.

Food

Food is another topic in which there is great variability between personal preferences. Be prepared to eat more than you usually do if you are not accustomed to all day physical activity. Be aware of the services offered on your map, and stock up to ensure that there will be no hungry stretches of your trip.

So there you have it. The basic elements of a bike trip to think about before setting off on a trip of your own. Once on the road you may think of more things would work a little better for you, or you may be too enthralled with your surroundings to be picky about what you brought with you or the maintenance of your bike. Bicycle touring can be a weekend getaway, summer vacation, or a post-graduation life plan. By combining the adventurous self propelled spirit of backpacking and the vast infrastructure of all kinds of roads across the globe, touring can prove to be an activity of limitless opportunities. Bearing these elements in mind will help facilitate a positive experience that can add more richness to you life.

Safe Travels.

Secure Communities Program (S-COMM) Endangers Civil Rights and Security

bostonmayday — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 10:19:06 -0700

Boston stands up for its immigrant community!

On Saturday, February 12th, 2011 at 1PM, people from across Massachusetts will come together at the State House to protest the State’s intention to join the anti-immigrant and racist “Secure Communities” program (S-COM).

Under the guise of public safety, “S-Comm” endangers the civil rights and security of all and is particularly an attack on immigrants and people of color. The federal program mandates local law enforcement to cross check the fingerprints of those arrested against the Homeland Security’s database in search of immigration status. While supposedly targeting “violent offenders,” the vast majority of those detained and deported are considered “non-criminals”. This would include those who have been unlawfully arrested, those arrested for minor offenses like traffic violations and those who ultimately have their charges dropped. In Suffolk County, the only jurisdiction in the state currently enrolled, 68% of those detained and deported have been “non-criminals”, the sixth highest percentage in the country.

The “S-Comm” program is part of an overall effort to target immigrants and maintain a permanent second-class status for millions of workers. The time is now for communities across the state to stand together against “S-Comm” and all anti-immigrant programs. We strongly believe that undocumented immigrants are not criminals!

Our demands are simple and clear:

No to “Secure Communities” and all anti-immigrant programs!
No human being is illegal—Full rights for all immigrants!
Stop the raids and deportations now!

Partial list of endorsers (as of 2/10/11): American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Massachusetts, Boston-Cambridge Alliance for Democracy, Center for Nonviolent Solutions, Centro Presente, Chelsea Uniting Against the War, Circulo Bolivariano Martin Luther King, Code Pink, Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), Community Church of Boston, Dominican Development Center, FMLN Boston, Harvard No Layoffs Campaign, Immigration Pastoral Center, Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), International Action Center (IAC), MassCOSH/Centro de Trabajadores, Mass. Jobs with Justice (MJWJ) , MataHari: Eye of the Day, MIRA, National Lawyers Guild (NLG) - Massachusetts Chapter, Party for Socialism and Liberation, Project Voice AFSC, Proyecto Hondureno, Resist the Raids Network, Stop the Wars Coalition, Student Immigrant Movement, Student (SIM), Labor Action Movement (SLAM), Union of Minority Neighborhoods (UMN), United for Justice with Peace, Veterans for Peace, Worcester Immigrant Coalition (WIC), Worcester PeaceWorks

Buffalo Bans Fracking in Groundbreaking Vote

anonymous — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0700

In a definitive vote, the Buffalo City Council voted to ban fracking- a move which will then not pollute local drinking water. It is odd that not doing something horrible, seems like a great victory.

“Citizens and clean water advocates heralded the Buffalo Common Council’s move to become the first city in New York State—and the second major city nationwide—to ban hydraulic fracturing for natural gas. The Common Council passed “Buffalo’s Community Protection from Natural Gas Extraction Ordinance” today by a 9-0 vote, following months of citizen lobbying by Frack Action Buffalo, a local grassroots group."-US IndyMedia

“(BUFFALO, NY)—Citizens and clean water advocates heralded the Buffalo Common Council’s move to become the first city in New York State—and the second major city nationwide—to ban hydraulic fracturing for natural gas. The Common Council passed “Buffalo’s Community Protection from Natural Gas Extraction Ordinance” today by a 9-0 vote, following months of citizen lobbying by Frack Action Buffalo, a local grassroots group.

At a a press conference following the vote, victims of fracking in New York joined Buffalo Common Coucilmembers and former New York State Senator Antoine Thompson in praising the ban. Thompson was the sponsor of the statewide moratorium on fracking passed in August. Buffalo, which sits atop areas of the Marcellus and Utica Shale formations, follows in the footsteps of Pittsburgh, PA, which passed a similar ban in November 2010. The Buffalo law prohibits drillers from fracking for gas in Buffalo, and bars the disposal of drilling wastewater or other production wastes within city limits.

The inclusion of drilling wastes sets the Buffalo legislation apart from Pittsburgh’s, and zeroes in on what has proved a contentious issue for the gas industry in Pennsylvania: what to do with the millions of gallons of wastewater generated by the process, which can contain carcinogens, volatile organic compounds, and even radioactive material. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection came under fire last month when the Associated Press reported that the DEP authorized the discharge of at least 3.6 million barrels of fracking wastewater into rivers and streams across the state with minimal to no treatment. According to New York State Department of Environmental Conservation documents, wastewater from vertical fracking wells in New York has already been accepted by Buffalo water treatment facilities.

The Buffalo ordinance was drafted by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, with additional aid from the Community Environmental Defense Council. Frack Action Buffalo gathered 1,650 signatures in support of the ordinance over several months.

The bill’s sponsor, Buffalo Common Councilmember Joseph Golombek (D) told the Buffalo News, “When it comes to the safety of our residents and protecting our environment, we do have a responsibility.”

“Buffalo is leading the way,” said Rita Yelda, a student at Buffalo State and Organizer with Frack Action Buffalo. “And we urge other cities and towns to pass similar bans. We want to tell Albany: we will stand up in defense of our communities if you will not.”

“The gas industry has shown us again and again that fracking cannot be done safely, and that there is no good answer for what to do with the massive quantities of highly-toxic wastewater created in the process. In passing this ban, the City of Buffalo sent a message to cities and towns across New York that the threat posed by fracking is real, and that nothing short of a ban will protect us,” said Claire Sandberg, Campaign Director of Frack Action.

In December, former Governor David Paterson signed an Executive Order imposing a timeout on high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing until June. Executive Order #41 bars new horizontal drilling in New York and called for a revised draft of the heavily-critized draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (dSGEIS). The Executive Order followed two landslide bipartisan votes by the Senate and Assembly in support a moratorium. Environmental groups praised Paterson for imposing the nation’s first statewide moratorium on fracking, but criticized the Order for failing to include vertical gas wells, which are already in use in Western NY. A revised dSGEIS will be released on or around on or around June 1, 2011, and be followed by a new round of public comment.

Fracking is unregulated at the federal due to exemptions in federal environmental laws, including the Safe Drinking Water Act, Clean Water Act, and Clean Air Act."-Frack Off SN

Eugene: CLDC and Cultural forum shows END:CIV

anonymous — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Eugene’s Civil Liberties Defense Center and the student Cultural Forum sponsored a showing of END:CIV a SubMedia Production.

The movie, leaning heavily on Anarcho-Primitivist ideology and ethics is a must see. Featuring several premises of Derrik Jensen, noted author of the ‘End Game’ books. The Movie follows four of Jensen’s premises. This is the most profound critique of civilization to date.

The movie was followed by a panel discussion with John Zerzan- local primitivist & radio host. Jeff Leurs- recently freed political prisoner and Frank Lopez- host of the ‘Stimula7or’ and a member of the SubMedia collective who produced END:CIV.

What follows is answers to questions from the panel:

“There are projects involved in restoring clearcuts, as if we know what we’re doing, but they are dependent on the government, which changes”.-Leurs

“We normalize the idea to waif for heros, we must be the heroes”

“We Don’t have the power to destroy civilization, civilization is destroying us”

“How do we build a movement and a system that will sustain us? We need more localized communities."-Lopez

“We are living off the backs of the third world”

“We let destruction happen- just to watch our TV”-Lopez

“We aren’t able to feed ourselves. Yet we have our forgone conclusion of having energy, this situation we are in is astoundingly crazy, we need to ’re-skill’ ourselves”-Zerzan

“We can view this in a privileged way, but the industrial world will die”

Banner Drop in Solidarity With Egyptian Revolution

Black Tea Society — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 10:28:01 -0700

Yesterday, Eugene’s Black Tea Society dropped a banner, in a token gesture of support for the Egyptian Revolution, and in Solidarity with our Comrades in the Mankato Area Activist Collective.

We unequivocally support the Egyptian People’s right to self-determination.

We defy all attempts to demonize their revolution, and we denounce any attempts to suppress it.

We are all holding our breath. Will the rebel spark which ignites a great American conflagration come from the land of the Pharaohs? Only time will tell.

Defining Peace

anonymous — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 10:32:55 -0700

Peace is not merely the absence of war, but the presence of understanding. That is the understanding that it is not ideologically sound, morally coherent or politically practical to attack those around you with violence.

Violence is the use of force with the intent to cause harm and can take many forms. Violence can be direct, indirect or passive. Direct violence is the form we are most familiar with, intentionally causing physical harm eg: punching someone. Indirect violence is to intend to cause harm in all actions short of physical violence eg: using racial slurs to enforce cultural oppression. Finally Passive violence is non-action with the intent to cause harm, this is commonly associated with systematic oppression eg: a government denying its people food aid, knowing those people will starve.

Knowing what violence is allows us to then gain a scope of tactics for non-violence, which requires the expulsion of hate from one’s heart. The use of non-violence requires the confrontation of all forms of violence and allows a certain amount of force. It is conceivably non-violence to act, without the intent to harm, but to restrain. To tie up and transport individuals, to have shields which sustain and do not return blows and to contain violent elements. Armor is non-violent. The degree to which non-violence can be used is not limited to marches and boycotts. Indeed if there is popular support, a community could engage in escalating dialogue and when views are unalterably different a community has the capacity to non-violently defend itself. Almost any action is non-violent if it does not attack, intend to cause harm and affirms a principle. The moment one takes a swing, knowingly caused harm or deliberately tried to cause harm, that behavior has moved outside non-violence.

The reasons and excuses to use violence are many and the consequences are great, it is easy to say I was hurt and so I felt the need to hurt others. But if you did not want to be hurt, why would you hurt others? To partake in violence justifies any violence done to you already, it blurs the lines of correctness and honesty. The practical matter is that we live in such an interconnected world that greater influence can be exerted through nonviolent means than any bullet or baton could ever render. Even if you kill your opponent with violence, then you have justified any reprisal against yourself and you have made more enemies. If however you exert yourself as a physical barrier between the oppression caused by your opponent and the oppressed, you have entered a realm of tactical ownership as opposed to realm of reciprocal harm. By stopping trains, ships, trucks, picketing stores, seizing, expropriating and exterminating the institution of oppression and creating a barrier of popular support any source of oppression can be expelled from any community. No need for guns or bombs which will only delay or change the institution, but if you want an institution GONE, it must be confronted with its own inhumanity.

Take heart in these words:

Be at Peace. Not around peace, after or before peace. Be at peace. Wether there be a great tempest on the sea, Wether you are in a dungeon under lock and key, Wether state or economy says what you can be, Wether you are standing or on broken knee, Wether you are burdened or bending like a tree, If you are rooted in Peace you will be free.

Prez Says 'Talk to the Hand'

anonymous — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 10:38:48 -0700

University of Oregon President LaRiv. came to speak as the Faculty senate, in the Jaqua (Jock) center. The meeting was held in a classroom (in fact, the only public classroom), in the one public floor of the Jaqua center. The talk was about the Riverfront Research development or ‘how to destroy natural riparian zones’.

LaRiv answered two questions, the first was about using an old plan, he says ‘it’s not old, we made, you know, some revisions’.

The second question was about the costs and contract, to which he replied ‘I am not like, a lawyer or anything, but, you should talk to the state board of higher education’.

Then he was prompted by Senate president Nathan Tublitz, to actually answer the questions.“I believe thsoe questions have already been answered”, this was followed by gasps, chuckles and loud coughs, “I don’t mean to be facious but…”, said LaRiv.

The mouthpiece of the university… doesn’t care and thinks all questions have already ben answered. Great, way to be worthless.

PS: You’re not a pirvate school and you are still owned by the public… that means public meetings and accountability.

PPS: Nobody wants this, the dicision should be a sinch, No more waterfront development.

PPPS: You dont have to just build buildings to grow and improve education, try correcting the students of color imbalance and ofering quality classes, eh?

Why Money?

anonymous — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 10:40:53 -0700

When people talk about ‘THINGS’, objects, ideas, or even time, these are measured in terms of value in money. All that is exists now has a theoretical value placed upon it, from the water and food we drink to the star registry. One man even offered to sell his soul for money(1). At the same time money is used, it is constantly changing value. All things are for sale, but did you ever stop to consider why money exists at all, the circumstances that created it and shape this amorphous thing which all else is relative to, how did money come to exist?

An economist will tell you money is part of a natural progression of economic history, that it allows an individual to divide the relative value of an object into an abstract thing- money. But what IS money? money in a practical sense should be easily divisible and portable, but also must be able to represent the value of all things and be trusted. But this hasn’t always been so, money as we think of it is a modern construct is not just some utilitarian object of service- like a shell used as a medium of proportional object division.

Has money always existed? NO! Money is a modern concept, units of exchange are present only with the rise of urban settings and following the crop/animal domestication. The use of exchange currency was not necessary even in many early periods, as one knew one’s neighbors and could establish trust and debt enough to compensate for any differences in the value of barter. The barter system also allowed for individuals to exchange at the value they felt the product of labor was worth. The Spartan society of ancient Greece was so adamant of refusing currency that they abolished all currency within the city-state of Sparta. Local Greek kings would print their faces on the money and as the kings changed, so did the money, Spartans rejected this as absurd and corrupting way to live (some soldiers did however, keep treasures and spoils in banks on the borders of Sparta).

Let’s be honest, modern money has taken on a value all its own, an object to be desired and hoarded. Sometimes if one has enough of it, it becomes an investment with which to earn more money. In fact it is so abstract from its purpose of being a unit of division that it is thought of as a object in its own right. How money transitioned into this object of inherent value is unclear, but it may have some roots in the transition to modern banking. The advent of banks allowed for ‘book keeping’ which led the sketchy practices of interest, investments and loans. The modern banks and State economies, now electronic, can create artificial money without ever needing to print a paper or mint a coin. The large abstraction of millions, billions and trillions creates a world without limits, where money is infinite and commanding.

This abstract money, the modern money that we think of is problematic in it’s very nature for two reasons. ~The first problem is that unlike any other object it has no relative cap- for instance; if you have one thousand couches, dogs, beds, etc, you have no conceivable need for any more. In the case of money there is no limit to its capacity, one person could have one thousand of any currency, ten thousand currency, one million, one billion or one trillion and still desire more- this is the only object that inspires an infinite level of greed! There is no possible end to the level of greed, because an electronic bank can simply add more zeros. Nothing in the universe, save the universe itself has ever been truly infinite, therefore the unending greed for this money will know no limits to the exploitation and suffering created to attain this money. Unlike Adam Smith’s prediction there will not be any division of wealth as there is a division of labor, instead there will be just great hills of money and great poverty. Without the ability to constrain money, there can be no hope of constraining the greed that will follow the pursuit of it.

~The second problem related to the use of money is its usage- that money does not unite communities, it destroys them. Money requires that you are dependent on it, needing it for every necessity- because someone can be paid to do what you could do for yourself. This process disempowers every individual who uses money. From the peanut butter we buy for the sandwhiches, to the dyes in our clothes, all aspects of life an living will become commercialized. This effect will distance the places of production from consumption, from the first to the third world. From the seen to the unseen. The use of money will spread the effects of worst elements to farther regions. Wars for instance, will not be fought will soldiers you know, but with mercenaries from abstract regions- paid to kill and to die. This removal is observable in every shut factory door, in the closure of any effective cooperative enterprise. That is to say we are to be displaced from the production and the customer, we are be so separate that we cannot relate to the person on the other end, they are just a part of the monetary exchange- as much as a machine or plant. This process has terrible social effects, making humans disconnected, from one another.

The use of money will not set us free. In fact it will crush us. The blows need not be physical, but a simple denial of work. Even if you can find work, your work will be as a part of a machine. There will be no escape. As in China, even if you try to jump from the system and die, they will catch you and put you back to work. This sounds deeply hopeless, it is not. But the resistance must mount quickly. The first step is to break the latter then the former problems of money, in that order. We must know the people around us, recognize the suffering and dissatisfaction, collectivize and reject money over time from our communities, in favor of local production in the name of our needs. We cannot function in any meaningful way under this oppressive system, for the few granted passage into the upper echelons of society, you must ask what is the cost of your status, who is suffering to get you there. All the workers in the first and third world must recognize that we are part of a system oppressing us or part of a system that is causing that oppression. We must reject this system. Not all at once, but with a plan that dislodges these system of oppression.

Perhaps we will be attacked and money will be willed as a product to weigh upon all our heads. But I ask which is worse, the weight of money on your head or the price of blood on your hands? Which is more painful, the hard work of making your own shoes and farming fields or being a participant in the decay of our world and the destruction of our sense of self?

Why money? There is no good reason.

A Look at a World Beyond Exploitation

anonymous — Sat, 25 Dec 2010 17:41:11 -0700

In 1952 the Cuyahoga river caught on fire, a river was burning. How did it get that way? The industrial centers on either side dumped chemicals, so many chemicals from industrial waste, the pollution killed all life in the water itself. This was a consequence of pollution going unchecked, industry being ill maintained and an ignorance of the balance between production and natural conservancy. A corporate process that exploited the workers, the citizens and disproportionately the poor erupted in a literal conflagration. How can we create a balance between our needs and still lead meaningful lives, or in the words of Camus can we be “Neither Victims Nor Executioners?” Is it possible to exist in such a world?

The world is complex, of this there is no doubt. Rainfall effects the water table at the time of the rain as well as months later with the snowmelt. The Rains may cause a river to rise in a flood and be destructive, yet it may also nourish crops and create a state of lush verdant foliage. So when humans introduce industrial manufacturing and chemicals cloud the skies to rain light acid upon us, can we blame the rain for its increased toxicity? Yet can we do away with industrialization without leaving billions in want?

Perhaps a better question is why WITH industrialization are billions STILL in want? Was not Capitalism’s promise to deliver to all the people, by creating incentives of work and by mass production, so that everyone would have more? If this is so, what great calamity has held us back, what sickness and plague should deprive the great many of the world of even the basic necessities of healthy food, clean water and shelter? Much less education and the great spoils of the elusive ‘American Dream’? Do not tell me that the great many are just lazy and refuse to work, spare me the details of how greed will bring about an economic utopia. It is for that reason, greed and corporate avarice, that we see Billions starving, living in filth, with poor sanitation and no hope or prospect of immediate relief.

Corporate dreams of global prowess have been achieved and have failed to render either glory or redemption for their great exploitation. Furthermore the expansion from national exploitation to global modes of exploitation, have shrunk the relative proportion of those who gain to less than a percent of a percent of the population. This trend of global industry has narrowed the scope of their gains and spread only despair among those wishing for a way out.

Any solution to social or environmental disparity will necessitate a fission from our current economic modes and way of life. To paraphrase Dorothy Day ‘We aren’t saying go around wearing a burlap sack’. But Peter Maurin begins to identify the problem with industrialism and corporatism, in the earlier part of the 20th century “The Industrial Revolution did not improve things; it made them worse. The industrial revolution has given us technological unemployment. And the best way to do away with technological unemployment is to place idle hands on idle land” (Maurin was no fan of a planned economy, this is just common sense). Because we can only produce what we need, there is no sense in producing vast quantities beyond need, therefore even with production there will be shortfalls, partly because the production is not always needed and partly because there is a want so desperate for basic necessities that stores are an abstraction of daily life. Despite efforts from modern advertising trying to create artificial want and a market need, in the first and third world, there simply is not a static wealth for such a demand. We cannot keep producing and producing in great quantities exclusively for the wealthy, luxuries, while the great many poor suffer in want of basics, necessities. The consequence of such a course is both impractical and unethical. Marx’s vision of “the rich will get richer while the poor get poorer”, ought to be augmented by ‘and the poor will be kept from the rich by great geographic separation of the first and third world, to be left to suffer amongst themselves’. In short we can produce all the crap we want and we will not create enough, we will have ‘idle hands’, idle bodies, communities, cities and nearly idle countries. What is capitalism’s answer to this- loans at high interest from the World Bank and IMF, will these loans free the people to ascend from poverty, or enslave them in a debt they cannot repay? That is another question for another day, but as plainly as we have eyes, we can see a great disparity, plainly evidencing a failure of the economic system to meet needs at any basic level, on a global scale.

Turning to economic structures of Capitalism, Industrialism or Corporate models will not raise our ‘idle hands’. Freedom will mean the ability to create sovereignty over land, with banks of seed, not money. The problem is the amount of land, we cannot run the land if we all strive to just feed ourselves. We are not inherently individualists, even large industrial farms need extra hands. But if we work land together, we can both create community and conserve resources. Also humans are not exclusively solitary creatures, Abraham Maslow the Psychologist describes famously a need for both individual sovereignty and community belonging. The purpose of an agricultural movement is therefore three fold- First to avoid the large impersonal and exploitative corporate system and conversely to deliberately create community and collaborative, consensual, local work. Second to work with land, not around or through it, but with it, to produce based on basic needs and meaningful projects; this environmental idea is one that seeks to avoid exploitation or degradation, but include the land in a part of the process of deciding what, when, where and how much to grow. Third the solution must not be based in assumed hierarchy or roles but instead empowering the people along with the land to motivate growth of food and production of essential goods. In short such a system should break down a Industrial order, a Social order and an Environmental order, to be replaced over time with a more comprehensive, holistic participation with one another, the earth and our labor.

In the interest of safety, it may be well worth the consideration that no person should just go and dig up soil wantonly. Indeed knowing what to grow, paying attention to the seasons, watering patterns, frost, plant cycles, perennial and annual plans and time investment is no small matter. In the 60’s and 70’s many young ‘hippies’ tried back-to-the-land movements and starved because they didn’t know what they were doing. Don’t do that.

If you want to learn how to farm, try volunteering at a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), Lane County has a master gardener program, try ‘WWOOF-ing’ (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms, see their website ). Try a garden first and work with people you know, the community gardens in Eugene/Springfield are a great way! Learning about ‘greenhouses’ and ‘volunteer plants’ that are edible are both major tools to success. Practically speaking even thirty people can be too few, you can get burned out on the same faces, try up to 50 or 100! This is not a small endeavor, as you may now imagine. They process of organizing need not fall upon one person’s shoulders, to do this right. An organization ought to be started, where people can get together and talk about their gardens, learning together and gathering skills to prepare for a more full-time endeavor. Some groups align based upon religion as with the Catholic Worker movement or the Amish/Mennonite/Shaker communities. Religion does not have a monopoly on farming groups, Intentional Communities coming together around other beliefs- ideological, family or common interests create ties. The point is, that it is far easier to get along with people who you have a great number of things in common with. Also social groups can function together, because community is no joke and there ought to be times of cohesion and meeting those around you, outside of work as well as new faces, for some variety. Community cannot exist without communication, this means meetings and gatherings of some sort, that is a fact. There is extensive literature on the topic of organic/sustainable/productive agricultural skills and organization, as well as intentional communities and challenging socio-economic hierarchy, if your interest has been piqued.

Radical Caroling

Black Tea Society — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 10:28:01 -0700

The Holiday Season is upon us once again and Eugene’s Anarchist Black Tea Society is full of the holiday spirit. As anarchists we cherish the seasonal values of gift giving and cooperation as much as that red-clad communist Santa Claus does. In fact we are so devoted to the promotion of relationships based on the spirit of generosity rather than cutthroat competition that an entire school of anarchist thought is based in the notion of “gift economics”. A gift economy is a society where goods and services are provided free of charge without expectation of immediate compensation.

Sadly we, like many Americans, are not able to give as generously as previous years due the parasitism of the bankers and the immiserating effects of capitalism. We are however determined to not allow modern material scarcity to dampen our festivities. We are pleased to announce our first ever anarchist holiday caroling troupe. On December Tuesday 21st at 2:00pm we will gather at the holiday market to sing songs of joy, rebellion, and subversion.

Let the ruling class tremble in their Christmas stockings!

Let the sound of our collective voices batter the eardrums of Kitty Piercy and the Eugene City Council!

Together lets decorate the Christmas tree of equality with the ornaments of class consciousness!

Yours in anarchy,

Black Tea society

Rioting Is a Healthy Site for Sore Eyes

anonymous — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 17:46:20 -0700

‘Standing Ground’ is a phrase with two meanings. First it means to stand one’s ground-to have a defiant spirit. Second it means to have a physical space around which a community unites. The University seldom has either and needs both. The streets of Eugene become a physical place and the unruliness is an embodiment of a resistance to oppression. If you were at the riot, you were yelled at by authority figures who had neither respect for you nor your friends. They gassed you, they arrested nine of you and they would not have hesitated from killing you. In a drunken revelry you may have realized what many politically savvy folks already know, that we live in a horribly cruel and violent society, that cruelty and violence was unleashed upon you. You made a Standing Ground and you defied the police- if only for a short time. Well done. One University head-shed- Sheryl Eyster is quoted as saying the situation was a “disappointment…we would have certainly liked to have been trying to prevent”. Right, Ms. Eyster, lets placate students and calm them into living submissive lives. To hell with that, lets hope everyone learned that the state, at all levels is oppressive- officers were called out from Lane County Sheriff’s Office, the Springfield Police Department and the Oregon State Police (in addition to EPD). One police agent – Lt. Scott Fellman is quoted as saying “It shouldn’t be happening because it’s illegal and dangerous”. I got news for you Fellman- your organization a greater danger to any student than any other organization and if your laws weren’t so repressive, this wouldn’t be an issue in the first place. One student is quoted as saying “It was like a war zone”. Who made that war zone? Who fired tear gas and dove a car into the crowd- the police. So let’s question who was doing the more serious damage, the gang running around with guns like a snatch-squad, or the people drinking and having fun? Students did throw bottles, rocks and even eggs. But come on, who had the majority of force- the Police, so who’s ethical responsibility is it to let people go free- the Police. When students get together in a public space, that is challenging to authority figures, because control of space is power. People aren’t allowed to have power. That is why students will take Standing Ground, as they should, because the police oppress us all and that is just plain wrong. Let us all stand in solidarity with the students the next time they stand their ground.

Tea Party Has a Leak

anonymous — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 17:50:38 -0700

In recent news, mark Williams- noted leader in the Tea Party has been expelled from the group.

The Conservative groups has gained support, by trying to be populist demagogues. The harassed politicians by bussing in people from out-of-area to ‘make’ issues in town hall meetings a tactic called ‘astro-turf’ (meaning fake grass-roots). The Tea Party is noted as a low taxation platform that also sports many ‘birthers’ (those who do not believe US President Barak Obama was not born in the United States and is therefore ineligible for the presidency).

SOmehow Williams managed to become too extreme for them… after he wrote a personal blog note targeting the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). The NAACP responded, cautioning the Tea party, if it wants to maintain any legitimacy, it would need to expel its racist elements- which may include many members. As a token nod that he had gone too far, the Tea Party leadership expelled Williams. This leaves a massive gap in leadership as the wolves gather for power.

The Tea Party is notable as having been influenced strongly by political figure Sarah Palin (noted for a failed vice presidential candidacy in 2008). The Tea Party is also noted to be supported by 10% of the US population according so one survey. So who will fill the void of power in a ‘family values, financial freedom, freedom, liberty, political scandal party’? Time will tell.

Political Prisoners to the North

Fight'th'Man — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 17:51:56 -0700

At least 4 community organizers currently being held as political prisoners as G20 related police repression continues to increase.

As the G20 meetings happen behind fortified fences, numerous long-time community organizers working on issues ranging from migrant justice to climate change to indigenous sovereignty are being targeted and arrested by police.

At approximately 4:45 a.m., June 26, about 20 police officers raided a Toronto home. They entered the house without consent through the back door, aggressively dragging unclothed people from their beds, kicking others who were asleep on the floor.

Police demanded that everyone provide names and identification. A number of people repeatedly requested to view the warrant before complying with police demands.

“I requested a warrant at least five times from the cop who refused to show me his badge number, to which he said they have every legal right to do what they’re doing and they didn’t have to show us anything,” said Tammy Kovich, a resident of the raided house.

Police forcibly detained and cuffed a number of people, and refused to allow those in the house to call for legal advice. Without showing warrants, asking consent, or giving notice, police did an illegal cursory search of some of the people on the premises as well as the house itself.

“I went out the front door to get a signal so that I could call for legal advice, and a cop grabbed me and pushed me back towards the house. A minute later, I was on the phone with the G20 legal people, and he grabbed my phone away from me and smashed it onto the front porch,” stated another resident, Renee Henderson.

One arrest was made at this house: an organizer of G20 Childcare as well as other community projects. A warrant was not shown for their arrest. This individual was also detained and harassed by police earlier this week while walking on in Toronto, and was searched without credible legal rationale.

Across town, the door to another house was kicked in and three long time community organizers Leah Henderson, Alex Hundert and Mandy Hiscocks were placed under arrest. Warrants have also been issued for the arrest of other community organizers. These politically motivated raids and arrests of community members are just some of the tactics the police have been using to intimidate and silence those who have voiced their concern about the illegitimate and undemocratic institutions of the G8/G20.

An Open Letter Regarding The 2010 U.S. Assembly of Jews: Confronting Racism & Israeli Apartheid

International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 17:55:41 -0700

In less than a month, people from across the United States and beyond will be gathering at the 2010 U.S. Assembly of Jews: Confronting Racism and Israeli Apartheid (the “Assembly”).

The Assembly is an historic event intended to build relationships, political clarity and Jewish anti-Zionist organizing and activism. It takes place at a time when recognition of the brutal nature of the State of Israel is growing, and increasing numbers of people are compelled to challenge its impunity. To date, the Assembly has over forty endorsers, anticipates two hundred participants, and has gained the interest of Palestinian, Palestinian solidarity and anti-racist movements in the United States, as well as the attention of mainstream Jewish media.

Given the stated purposes of the Assembly, we are expecting challenges to be leveled against it. IJAN, the main organizer of the Assembly, is already receiving criticism based on inaccurate assumptions or apparently different political goals. With this momentous event upon us, we would like to take a moment to make clear the principles, positions and goals of the Assembly and help correct or prevent misconceptions.

IJAN and the Assembly stand firmly against Zionism – the exclusionary colonial ideas, policies and practice that privilege Jews above, and at the expense of, Palestinian people. By extension we reject the Jewish nationalism that underlies Zionism, a nationalism that erases diverse Jewish histories and champions safety in separation, isolation and domination of others. We believe that true safety and long-term freedom can only be found in the emancipation of all people.

We expressly challenge Zionism’s monopolization of our diverse Jewish histories, politics, cultures and religious practices. We take strength from and join in the long tradition of Jewish commitment to human emancipation. Against the Zionist betrayal of this tradition and the hijacking of Jewish history, the Assembly is a collective act of Jews reasserting and reconnecting with a long history of participation in social justice movements.

In the same way that we reject Zionism’s inherent racism, we reject racism and hatred in any form and against any people or person. Thus we refuse to ally ourselves with anti-Jewish racists, white supremacists or Holocaust deniers. To do otherwise, would mean to embrace the Zionist strategy of conflating Judaism and Jewishness with Zionism, a tactic used to assume and even impose unconditional support of Jews for Israel regardless of that State’s actions. In our unequivocal rejection of Zionism, we do not and will not take part in actions that conflate Zionism and Judaism, whether intentionally or thoughtlessly. We believe that supporting Palestinian self-determination requires challenging Zionist ideas, policies and practice, not the practice of Judaism.

To ensure that we are neither divisive nor obtrusive guests in Detroit, the Assembly will not endorse participation in any political activities other than those developed through the collaborative national process of the organizing for it. We request Assembly participants not to be provoked by those who may attempt to undermine the objectives of the Assembly, including by calling for our participation in activities outside of and contradictory to it.

In addition, IJAN will not align itself with those who either seek to use the struggle against Zionism for their own ends, individual or collective, or who proclaim themselves anti-Zionist but whose divisive actions serve only to further a Zionist agenda, undermining Palestine solidarity work and anti-Zionist organizing. Rather, the Assembly is intended to promote the building of organized forces of Jews who can multiply and amplify efforts to overcome Zionism and decolonize Palestine, by working with and in support of the Palestinian struggle for liberation.

To that end, we welcome all who are 1) interested in supporting the organizing of anti-Zionist Jews as part of the broader Palestine solidarity movement and anti-racist, anti-imperialist organizing in the United States and beyond, 2) committed to the principles reflected in the Assembly’s purpose, goals, assumptions and expectations, and 3) able to express this commitment through participation that supports the goals and activities of the Assembly. While we welcome discussions on our continually evolving struggle to overcome the destructiveness, including of life and land, of Zionist principles, practices and policies, we will not tolerate attempts to disrupt, undermine, provoke or attack participants, speakers or facilitators.

Fascism Stinks! A communiqué from Eugene Anarchists

Black Tea Society — Sun, 09 May 2010 18:00:30 -0700

To whom it may concern,

We members of Eugene’s anarchist Black Tea Society are shocked and appalled by the behavior of a number of reckless hooligans during the Pacifica Forum meeting Friday, May 7th! In the early evening a putrid smell, very similar to that of looming fascism, filled Esslinger Hall. The culprit: three dozen stink bombs. What these young miscreants just don’t understand is that history has proven time and again that fascists are consistently vanquished by reasonable dialogue and passive sign holding. After all what brought down Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Franco and many more was clearly the might of Western capitalist logic. These misguided youth are obviously wing nut Utopian Kropotkonites! We are in complete total agreement with the wise and benevolent University administrators that these hooligans actions were childish and unimaginative and that fascists are sacrosanct should be unopposed. We also hold that the brutal response of university security was entirely justified. We suggest to campus security that they adopt a policy of throwing all anti-fascists down stairs, as they did to Fridays protesters. We hope that in future people will exercise proper restraint when dealing with advocates of genocide and totalitarianism.

Hugs and Kisses, Black Tea Society

May Day 2010

Fight'th'Man — Sat, 01 May 2010 18:03:46 -0700

Brush Up on Your Knowledge of Union History

What is May Day?

Each year, many nations around the world honor May Day, also known as International Workers’ Day. The date is respected in the United States as the anniversary of an historic undertaking for workers’ rights. On May 1, 1886 hundreds of thousands of workers paraded through the streets of Chicago, New York, St. Louis, Milwaukee, and other American Cities demanding the eight-hour workday. in many cases, despite municipal laws, many employers continued to exact long workdays from their employees. On May 1, workers achieved their hard-fought eight-hour workday.

In subsequent years, May 1 became the day labor unions and other groups would organize public demonstrations to solidify their right to shorter hours. In 1890, the American Federation of Labor reached overseas to Europe to spread workers’ rights; May Day had become an internationally recognized opportunity for direct action. This tradition of activism continued in the United States until 1953 when tens of thousands of May Day participants were denied their usual permit to march. In the United States, this date has since dwindled into relative obscurity.

The Pullman Strike

In July of 1894, south of Chicago on an orderly three thousand acre track of land, Pullman Illinois erupted in a violent clash between railroad workers, industry, and government. The previous May, three thousand workers from the Pullman Palace Car Company went on strike to protest a wage reduction. By June, the American Railway Union brought the conflict to the national scene by virtually halting railway transit west of Chicago.

Within days, federal soldiers were dispatched to break the strike. This decision by President Cleveland resulted in intensified violence. Unions of workers and alliances between owners had evolved before this conflict. George Pullman had a city designed to provide for all of the needs of his employees. In response to the financial panic of 1893, Pullman authorized a wage cut of 25% without reducing his workers’ cost of living. Owners and laborers both took a stand. The Pullman conflict provided the spark to initiate the general strike, which shook the country perhaps more than any other single labor dispute in American history.

Radical Unions

The Knights of Labor

(KOL) was first established in 1869 by textile workers in Philadelphia. In 1886, The KoL grew to contain over 700,000 members including blacks and women. The organization did not participate in the protests of May 1, 1986; However, many local branches did take part. The KoL was obligated to operate as a radical union from its inception. The founding coincided with the dissolution of the Garment Cutters’ Union. Many members had been blacklisted but determined to found the Knights of Labor as a secret organization.

These leaders expanded the Union’s influence by welcoming people from different industries, genders, and races into the organization. This was a radical decision for the time and a huge step for inclusivity. (Unfortunately, the KoL continued to exclude and antagonize Asian workers.) With its diverse membership, the KoL sought to achieve the eight-hour workday, the elimination of child labor, and equal pay for equal work among other pursuits.

After many successes in the early 1980s, subsequent strike failures, refusal to participate in the successful May Day demonstration, and competition with the newly established American Federation of Labor, the influence of the KoL had largely disappeared by 1900.

The Industrial Workers of the World

(IWW), established in 1905, took some of the most drastic and effective methods of any labor organization to that time. By 1917, many states enacted laws to pacify many IWW initiatives. The IWW was quick to declare strikes, boycotts, and slowdowns. It often employed direct action, thereby sacrificing many chances for comprise. Members were drawn from all working class people including immigrants, women, minorities and the unemployed. The IWW became the most Inclusive union on the national stage.

The IWW states in its constitution: “Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth.” Its zealous pursuit of these goals lasted into the 1920s During World War I, the IWW never ceased its activities. Many members were arrested for evading the draft and others were falsely accused of cooperating with German agents. Many of the organizations’ leaders were arrested under provisions of the Espionage Act. This included the founder William Haywood, who skipped bail to flee to Russia, leaving the IWW with a massive debt. In the mid-1920s membership had dropped off and the IWW’s influence had greatly diminished. The organization has survived and continues to organize labor actions today.

Modern Union Strategies

Trade Unions, Industrial Unionism & Service Unionism

Trade unions accept members based on their individual occupation or trade. Commonly, workers in the same craft and in the same union will be employed by many different industries and by many different employers. Trade unions have much in common with guilds, which have existed since medieval times.

Industrial unions were designed to incorporate all workers from a given industry. Often this form of union is referred to as a vertical union since it consists of the least skilled workers to the most specialized workers. Prior to the Knights of Labor, unions had been organized as trade unions. The American Federation of Labor that largely supplanted the Knights of Labor accepted all workers, but continued to organize them on the basis of their trade. The Industrial Workers of the World was the next genuine large industrial union.

As the size of the service economy has grown, service unionism has been used to operate in specific localities rather than in specific industries and for specific trades. Closely coordinated activism among participants in a strike prevent counterstrokes from employers and avoids targeting single shops which sometimes merely close down rather than directly oppose a strike. By targeting an entire region, the people from the collective area can more forcefully demand better wages, hours and benefits.

The Dollar, Oppression and a Viable Alternative

Fight'th'Man — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 18:07:58 -0700

We are constantly told if we work hard we will earn more and do better in life. This is a lie. Minimum wage, a concession paid for in the blood of years of Union struggle. The 8 hour work day, 8 to rest, 8 to play and 8 to keep the bills at bay. How about the 5 day work week. Won, won by struggle and years of pushing back. These small luxuries, why were they so hard fought?

Well to answer that question, first consider what money is. Money is a unit of currency exchange, divisible and able to multiply to infinite levels. The use of money is a system, one which is not consentual or even democratic, everyone born is forced into the system! The dollar and currency is an arbitrary unit, changing with inflation and deflation, wreaking havoc on the lives of everyone under the system. exchange is simply a tool to control the lives of the many, by the few. The origins of money may have been organic, but it is manipulated toady, for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many, or in the words of Smedly Butler “Its a racket”.

The Racket

Since those few at the top control the vast majority of money, they had the power against which workers fought to earn the 5 day work week, 8 hour day and a minimum wage. The few did not want to reform and still today resist any reforms, spending millions in lobbies, billions in add campaigns and control the mass media. We are constantly told if we work hard we will earn more and do better in life. This is a lie. The advertisements which fund the leisure Television shows, news and print are from the wealthy, in who’s interest they try to defend. In who’s interest they print, publish and inform to distract and blind the masses to this system, wage oppression.

But money is just a tool of exchange right?

The use of money on a arbitrary scale means that trys to match skill and time. This is a flawed and oppressive system. Since some people make more money, the wage system says your time is worth more. Since our lives are are limited in time, because everyone dies, money by its very nature implies that some people’s lives are worth more than others. That is a deranged manipulation of human existence. A system that even implies that someone’s life is worth more than others, is just plain wrong.

The wage system is oppressive, but its all we’ve got, right?

Wrong, actually trade and barter existed for millennia prior to the oppressive system we have today. Trading goods for goods, removes any ambiguity as to the real worth versus externalized costs. Trade local, work local and help those around you.

Another system that could still have an intermediary exchange unit, but remove the oppression inherent to the dollar system. A hour wage system would provide incentive to work, become educated and equalize the labor value. If a person works an hour, they are paid an hour. The value of the hour is divisible by the labor applied to it. So a gallon of milk may cost 3/16 an hour, a house small house 25,000 hours. etc. the work one does is valuable, a janitor should receive no less than the business executive. A janitor is not an unskilled trade and physical labor is no less valuable than drawing designs for a house. The level of education could be correlated to a lowering of taxation services. The hour wage system rewards greater, those who contribute more. The average work week on one’s life could then be paid to the individual upon an accepted age of retirement. There is so much more to this, that this article cannot indulge, Consider the possibilities of success!

Pacifica Forum... Near Collapse?

Fight'th'Man — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 18:09:51 -0700

The noted hate group Pacifica Forum met again in the Downtown Baker Center- this week was Jimmy Marr presenting his third video ‘why the holocaust didn’t happen, because of detail inaccuracies between sources’ and true to form like all good conspiracy videos, told in a monotonous monotone voice. After listing their arguments, I will begin deconstructing them.

Summary: The holocaust didn’t happen, the gas chambers were a lie. The Nuremberg trials were a farce because the numbers and exact dates were estimations from the testimony varied slightly. The movie showed that there were multiple chemicals for killing prisoners, ‘but they should only have used only one to be efficient’, so the whole holocaust is a lie. The bodies were POWs, clearly, as evidenced by… nothing. Oh, and the camps were havens for retreating germans, fleeing the combat areas in Western and Eastern Germany… and all those records of Jews, Romani and political dissidents- all made up. “I don’t know… Yeah, I think this video is a good example of critical thinking”- Jimmy Marr.

-In short, its all a conspiracy, a big jewish conspiracy- … riiight.

This is a load of ridiculous tripe, Gas chambers are still standing, incinerators are still standing, mass graves still piled with bodies. After months and years of trains and untold faces going to die, you lose count after several hundred thousand. Estimates will vary, the killing went on for a long time. it doesn’t make the killing anymore acceptable. The chemicals may have changed, because we don’t learn in school, how to kill; the Nazis made a science out it, with guess and check. It is my understanding that there was a process of transition- from guns, to gas vehicles to gas chambers and the specific chemicals are irrelevant! If they changed the method of killing, or used different methods at different times, then witnesses would see different things; but that does not change the deaths of millions or make them more tolerable. POWs in death camps? Really? They had prisoner camps, they didn’ t need the death camps to house prisoners. As to fleeing Germans, the local cities were not evacuated, there were civilians living in them, there was no great exodus and for the few who fled, why go to the death camps- no food, cramped and not a housing facility and there were german soldiers there, so the allies would be sure to target these places! The argument is absurd, that would be like running to jail to flee the cops. As to the made up records well, if you don’t believe birth certificates and the nazi lists of deceased, there is not much I can say, because you wont believe any evidence I present.

There are survivors today, people who saw the death camps. How is it you deny the collective reports of thousands, the admission of the nazis to the events which occurred and the vast record of deceased? The gravity of the situation is not a joke, the deaths are not acceptable, not then and not today. The Armenian genocide, Rwanda, India, Irish, Native American/First people, Bosnia and Herzegovina (Sarajevo), and others, do you deny these, the historical mass murder of the past? Do you deny Palestine or Darfur, or anywhere else today? These are not acceptable.

I am glad to report this long-standing hate group’s member ship seems in decline, I counted only 7 participants, including the presenter (Jimmy Marr) and sponsor (Orval Etter). 11 detractors were present.

Even better news, no presentation next week, they couldn’t find somebody to speak! Maybe they will decide to disband soon. One can only hope.

Pacifica Forum Strikes Again

Fight'th'Man — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 18:11:30 -0700

Well, another week, another sad presentation. This time by Jay Knott, a noted scientist… wait, no he’s not. Well at least he has some hard science background… oh shoot, I guess that’s not true either. What is Mr. Knott proficient at? Well, he does have a british accent, so I guess that justifies the hour I endured of him prattling on until the highlight of the meeting ‘I really don’t know’- Jay Knott. That seems to sum up the meeting.

His points: It was first called ‘global warming’ now its called ‘climate change’, therefore its a conspiracy. The rings on trees indicate that temperature is not rising drastically, but if it is true that temperatures are rising, it’s because we are coming out of an ice age. Some climate scientists don’t give out their research before its complete, so they are dishonest… He then went on a tangent about how Climate change deniers are like holocaust deniers: they are marginalized, but should be proud that they are deniers…

Ignorance is bliss!

Next week: Jimmy Marr with ‘Yet another bad you-tube video on why the holocaust isn’t real… or if it is, not many people died. Set to a nasally monotonous monotone’. Maybe this week Mr.Marr will explain why EVEN IF, the numbers who died in the holocaust were in the lower, how that somehow makes it ‘ok’.

Their hateful language is resigned to the back corner of the University- tarnishing the image of intellectual study. The Pacifica Forum, is a weekly meeting group. They used to meet in (but have been kicked out of) Mckenzie hall, then the EMU, then Agate Hall and now the Baker Center (formerly the register-guard building). They meet on Fridays, at 530pm.

Pacifica Forum, Proving that you can waste words.

Book Review: Are Prisons Obsolete?

Anthony Anthony — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 18:14:14 -0700

Although Angela Davis had her book Are Prisons Obsolete? first published in 2003, I find it’s contents now and for sometime into the future as text for serious study. Making a strong and relevant case for prison abolition, she plainly delivers the goods deriving from established historical record and the current realities of market driven social dynamism in her thesis. Presenting the nexus of profit and punishment as it exists she informs the reader of the reality that prisons are.

Well researched, the book exposes the interest held in growing incarceration rates by “companies that one would assume are far removed from the work of state punishment have developed major stakes in the perpetuation of a prison system whose historical obsolescence is therefore that much more difficult to recognize.” Her riveting manuscript, (with chapters such as: Prison reform or Prisn abolition, and the Prison-industrial complex) points out the continuities of history, opening eyes to the now observable development of penal institutions and the correlations in developing economies and markets.

Noting gender is tantamount to structure within penal systems and their development, she sticks to her abolitionist guns in serious critique of reformist direction, her feminism resilient in the hailstorm of typically “feminist” reformism. The last chapter, “abolitionist alternatives” opens the door and mind giving the reader plenty to conceptualize the potentials for integral and needed change with.

Informative, conscious, and radically important this book is a short, but stacked, read for those curious about the prison-industrial complex and prison abolition. Nothing short of compelling, I will definitely seek out more writings by professor Davis in the future. Her book is published by Seven Stories Press.

Student Government, Activists Pass Anti-Bottled Water Legislation

The Student Insurgent — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 18:18:06 -0700

Older News is still good news.

After final confirmation from Constitution Court, the resolution will effectively halt purchasing of bottled water with student fee monies.

University of Oregon student government approved today the Take Back the Tap resolution, which prohibits the expenditure of student fee monies on bottled water. The resolution was authored by the Climate Justice League, a new student group on campus, as well as members of student Senate.

“I’m thrilled that the efforts of 30 environmental leaders on the Take Back the Tap campaign resulted in resounding support for the resolution,” student senator Jeremy Blanchard said. “[It] shows that students are ready to make the change necessary to move toward a more sustainable, just campus.” Blanchard is also one of the co-founders of the Climate Justice League.

The Take Back the Tap resolution was originally approved at the February 24 student Senate meeting and expected to be finalized at the March 3 meeting. However, a Senate rule requiring approval from the student Rules committee created confusion as to whether Senate could actually finalize the resolution. Despite the possible violation of its own rules, Senate voted to confirm the resolution. The student Constitution Court approved today the resolution for immediate implementation.

UO Climate Justice League is a new student group formed out of the successful PowerShift West event in November, which had over 500 attendees from various west coast states. Our mission is to empower students to organize their communities and be leaders in the climate justice movement. By using targeted campaigns, we will work together toward a safe, just and sustainable future for all.

Pacifica Forum Is Off-Campus!

Fight'th'Man — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:20:43 -0700

I heard from members of the ASUO and it was confirmed today, by Paul Shang- Pacifica Forum will no longer meet on campus but at the Baker Center. Pacifica Forum is off campus.

The forum is off campus! While still on University Property, being paid for by students and community… it is a major minor victory! Or maybe a minor major victory, but in any case, the Forum has left campus, is spatially separated from the communities they target and no longer receives the privilege of academic appearance.

The administration took three months to get here, but hey, a victory is a victory! They get to meet and we get a safer campus. it’s win win.

Recent Anti Pacifica Forum and Need to Protest

Fight'th'Man — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 18:24:10 -0700

Students are taking a more mellow tone during the protests. Trying to incorporate education and as well as a positive message.

Friday’s protest consisted of a space for positive intention, standing around holding hands, and speaking to the emotions present in the situation. Then a professor gave a speech and there was a presentation on non-violent communication by Gary Baran of the Center for Nonviolent Communication. Many individuals choose not to come, deliberately honoring the requests of Rev. Jesse Jackson, to not lend credence to the forum, who was concerned that the protest gives them something to the forum to feed on.

Yet afterwards, when the forum presenter, Barry Sommers concluded his holocaust presentation. The forum regulars presented him with a rapturous and standing ovation. The forum feeds itself.

Meanwhile the protestors rejected this time of hate, trying to create something empowering rather than hurtful. The protest drags the forum out of the darkness and into the light where it can no longer feed itself. Here the forum is no longer empowered.

Some ask why? Why restrict hate speech, why should the protesters ask the forum to leave and how is it hurtful? Continue Reading I respond, that targeting groups, because of who they are is unacceptable. Saying- you should die as was part of Jimmy Marr’s presentation in December “Death to Jews,” goes too far. Their members have invited neo-Nazis made many feel unsafe. Their presence contributed to the environment where a someone felt comfortable spray painting a swastika in the LGBTQA office.

So how do you respond to hate speech if you don’t want to restrict free speech?

Education, demonstration and incorporation.

Education means find what they are saying, talk about it. Break down the arguments of hate. In this case: blaming Jews for the holocaust, breaks down when you consider the Nazi propaganda blaming Jews for economic downturn, which was a result of inflation to pay back reparations to France from the treaty of Versailles after WWI. Or the notion that Islam is criminal, ignores the fact that Muslims make up a population of over 1 billion individuals. For some Muslims, the ‘four pillars’ constitute Islam, for others it means simply not eating pork. Religion means different things to different people. Or that homosexuality is a mental disorder, since gender is constructed, or else all men and women would act in the same manner and all would be prone to the same behavior in the every situation. Gender is subjective and not intrinsic. And the ideas of Pacifica and hate speech is flawed.

So with education, you can challenge their ideas. This may be empowering to those feeling targeted by the hate speech. Unfortunately it will rarely dissuade the owner of those ideas. Compassion for their situation can help, I would venture a guess that most of the ideas meant to target and isolate groups ‘in the other’, are born from tremendous insecurity. That is, when one feels insecure, they need a group to blame, a target. This will fall on people who look different, talk a different way or have different mannerisms. If we want to change the ideas, we need to address the fundamental insecurities of those with the targeted group. For instance in germany, the economic downturn was blamed on the Jewish population, seen a money handlers; blamed on the Roma, seen as thieves or ‘dirty’. To address this insecurity one could make an appeal to basic humanness, which may or may not work. Another alternative is to offer alternatives, like to consider other sources of their oppression, government policy for instance. The international system which promotes war, or ideologies which promote large expenditure with no social gain. Really though, differing arguments will only go so far and if at all possible, try to get the individual to seek counseling. Generally, we could all use some counseling. By working to understand the difficulties and problems within us, we can find commonalities for all of us.

The second element is demonstration. This has the twin effects of first uniting communities, creating a voice for those disempowered and second for giving a medium so seek a better world. It is peculiar mission, activism. Because one cannot simply put away notions of inequality, once you see it, you will see it more and more frequently, working to stand against it takes courage. One must continue work, never satisfied, because there is always a better future. Yet able to find a fulfillment in the work you do.

Demonstrating, protesting and civil actions are necessary options by any citizenry to compel an action. We can see that there are counter currents of ideology, which define civic participation. But why participate at all, why not just stay at home or only go to work? because if you pursue this ideology, you are not part of society- you are an identity which is separate and impotent. Whereas if we work together seeking a better situation we can command a better situation for ourselves and everyone else simultaneously. If we stake it out for ourselves, we are just a bunch of individuals who happen to be near one another, but if we participate and become active, we become a society and can engage in debate. When that debate promotes violence against another group, that goes too far. This is a line, where we can say language is unacceptable, bigoted and dangerous.

Demonstrating can target the language of the actions of individuals, turn the anger and hatred into a source of unity. For instance, after the swastika was drawn in the LGBTQA office, there was a candle-light vigil, showing solidarity with the LGBTQ community. Similarly when hate language is employed, the group promulgating such language can responded to. Members of the offended community should speak up and have a space of safety. This unites communities and helps everyone support one another. Activism creates events and pressures others, it allows us to branch into something more effective and powerful. If we simply ignore a situation we gain nothing, but if we take hurtful situation and bring it into the light, there will be support.

So activism turns what is oppression and minimization into a place of empowerment. Effective demonstration allows the community besieged to find solidarity and empowerment. Responding to hate speech can be a source of unity and compassion. It is important to show solidarity with attacked communities, otherwise they are left out and isolated. Hate speech should be responded to, or its legitimacy will grow and may actually result in broader more hurtful situation. In the case of Pacifica Forum objecting to the targeting of groups and historical inaccuracy.

Finally incorporation. This is the notion of co-opting the event. “There is nothing gained from being ignorant”- Rev. Jesse Jackson. Any hateful language can be institutionalized, in that we learn about it, Rev. Jackson also purposes “learn the language of hate and reject it.” If we take the language and teach others why it is hurtful and why it should not be used, we all gain, we reduce their power and put it into our own hands.

Their meetings, brimming with hatred, can be met with demonstrations and education but their can also be reduced. Their hatred can be met with rejection, that is to say learn from their words and take away their power, turn their words against them. If they use the ’n’ word, know the historical significance of the the word and challenge it, break it down and educate them on why such phrases cannot be used, or be more proactive and break down their logic that allows them to use such a word.

As hate groups exist can be challenged and learned from. They can be a issue to unite around and a place to push against. They should be taken, used and repulsed. It is necessary to recognize, reject and replace hate speech and stand for safer communities.

Climate Activists 'Take Back the Tap' at UO

anonymous — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 18:28:29 -0700

The Climate Justice League works to educate peers on energy-wasting effects of bottled water through visual displays and street petitions. On February 24 the group will present a resolution to the ASUO senate to discourage the use of student fees on bottled water.

Show support by attending the “Take Back the Tap” bottled water educational event Monday, Feb. 22 from 11am - 3pm in the EMU Amphitheater.

THe event is being put on by the UO Climate Justice League in conjunction with the national Take Back the Tap campaign. The League is a new student group formed out of the successful PowerShift West event in November, which had over 500 attendees from various west coast states. Their mission is to empower students to organize their communities and be leaders in the climate justice movement.

Reggae Revolutionaries: An Interview With Indubious

John — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 18:35:41 -0700

I think most people who have seen Indubious or any other similar bands before will agree with me that witnessing them in concert is like stepping into another world. For me, every time I step into the WOW Hall for a show like this, for a split-second I always feel like I’ve just entered some giant tree trunk in a far-off mystical forest populated friendly tree-dwellers and fairy folk, which could just be one of the many reasons why this band keeps drawing me back, time and time again.

The first time I ever saw Indubious was in October, 2009. Made up of Transplants member Matty T Wells on drums and brothers Evton B and Skip Wicked on keyboards and bass, respectively, the band regularly tours up and down the West Coast, stopping in Eugene roughly every other month. While it would be impossible to fully describe just how amazing this trio is on stage, I can say with certainty that I was hooked from the very first song. Since then, I have seen them three times, including their most recent appearance at the WOW on January 12th where they played with long-time collaborator Alcyon Massive as well as the Californian group Tribal Seeds. It was on this night that I got to sit down with Indubious after their show and ask them a bit more about their music and their message.

“We decided to unite under the name Indubious [about 5 years ago]” began Evton B. “Indubious means undoubtful and sure of one’s self, and it kind of relates to our motto, which is ’live indubiously.’ And that means living without fear and without doubt. Based out of Grant’s Pass, Oregon, Indubious is but one of a handful of bands to emerge from the West Coast’s New Age community along with artists such as the previously mentioned Alcyon Massive, Mystic Roots, and the T Club. Musically speaking, most people would probably classify Indubious as a reggae band, but as Evton B remarked, that’s not wholly accurate: “It’s funny, because, for lack of a better genre, we’ve been classified as reggae, and we play with other reggae bands. But we never really felt like we fit in so directly with them, you know? Because, what we’re doing is really carving out a new niche in the music scene and creating a new genre, and until it’s well established, we’re always going to feel that way.” This statement is clearly reflected in the melodies crafted by the group onstage, which, while clearly influenced by reggae, also contain heavy elements of funk and on-stage improv which are uncommon for a traditional reggae band. As Skip noted, Indubious is a very musician-oriented band, with a lot of individuality among its members. “I don’t think anyone is really interested in making a reggae band or a funk band. I think everyone’s kind of doing their own thing, which makes for an interesting sandwich of fun,” he says.

From the point of view of the audience, seeing Indubious perform is like taking mushrooms for the first time. At the back of the stage you’ve got Matty T Wells, drumming out a steady rhythmic beat which provides the backbone for the duo upfront, comprised of Evton’s brainy synths and Skip’s pulsating - and occasional mind-blowingly funky - baselines. Add this to the fantastic interplay of green, orange, and purple hues that cast the stage in a harmonious glow, the rampant odor of pot smoke in the air, and the hundred or so dancing bodies in the crowd (ranging from the dreadlocked and dirty to the most clean-cut of college students), all radiating positive vibes of love and friendliness, and you’ve got one spectacular assault on the senses. Speaking of psychedelics, I asked Indubious what their stance was on drug-use and spiritual enlightenment. “We don’t advocate drug-use. We advocate anything that feels like it gets you closer to god, or whatever you want to call god, and I don’t advocate people going out and using things to run away. I don’t advocate that at all. I advocate people going to seek what they want to find, and if people feel like they want to do that through the use of Ganja or psychedelics, I would say that those things have been known to help people reach new creative pinnacles in their lives and the true nature of the world” says Skip, “but like anything those things can be abused, they can be overused, and they can be blanketed as just plain okay, which I don’t agree with.”

“And the reason that alcohol is the drug that is legal,” continued Evton B, “is because it’s the one that keeps people dumb and slow, and keeps people sedated. You don’t want to go change the world when you have a beer. You want to go change the world when you’re frying on acid and you’ve seen god and you’ve seen the reality. That’s why they demonize psychedelics. They don’t want people to have those pinnacles, because it takes us out of conformity and into the oneness that is the reality of our existence.”

As members of the New Age community, I was also curious to get these guys’ thoughts on 2012, and what some people anticipate as being a new era of spiritual enlightenment. Skip took the floor: “People are waking left and right; the world is waking up. The people that can’t see that are the ones who are trying to deny the fact that the world is waking up. But here’s something that you guys should all remember: your perception of the world is very based on what time you’re alive in in this timeline of the creation of man and all this stuff. If you go back thousands and thousands of years, you have no reference, no frame of mind to those times. All you have is right now, and all you have is this time. And I’ll tell you one thing, if you take this time out of context, it’s the quickest time that people have spiritually awoken up to the truth. It’s the darkest of times and it’s also one of the most lit up times, and what I mean is that, time is speeding up so rapidly, and things are happening so synchronistically, that once 2012 hits it’s like time is speeding up to this one pinnacle-“Tipping point,” interjects Matty.

“A Tipping point!” exclaims Skip. “And what I truly believe 2012 will be is a time for everybody to learn that all of the things that we thought were important before, we can drop those. We can go back to ancient techniques. Technology can still help us, we can still use technology, but guess what? We’ve got to grow our own food, we’ve got to have our own communities, we’ve got to know our neighbors, and we’ve got to have love in our hearts. If we don’t have those things, we’re not going to survive, and people are going to have an apocalypse if they cannot truly accept those principles. So you’re going to have the end of days for some, and the beginning of days for others, and I’m truly blessed to feel that it’s going to be the beginning of days for Indubious.”

In addition to being on the road, the group is also hard at work at home promoting their newly-formed label Righteous Sound Productions, which they are in the process of turning into a non-profit on which they released their latest album “Cosmic Seed” as well as Alcyon Massive’s debut album “Dreaming the World Awake.” As for touring, the band has stated that they are in preparation for an Islands’ tour, followed by a possible tour of Japan. Ultimately, however, Indubious sees no limits in spreading the message of love, light, and community, and as Skip says: “There’s beautiful people all over the world, and I just can’t wait to meet them all.”

So, whether or not you’ve heard of Indubious before or even like them, the message is clear. And while the group has no current performance date for Eugene as of yet, you can be sure to hear their music and find out more about them at www.indubiousmusic.com . See you at the next show!

Student Senate Votes on Resolution Against Pacifica Forum on Campus

anonymous — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 18:38:21 -0700

Unanimously the Student Senate voted in approval of the resolution which calls for Pacifica Forum to “[get the fuck] off the university” (some words and emphasis added). The issue was safety, as students and community members sighted violent attacks, harassment and a feeling of general insecurity from the Pacifica Forum’s presence on campus.

While this meeting sent the resolution to rules committee, where it will go through grammatical not substance reform. It will be heard for final approval in next week’s senate meeting… stay tuned for that. Further that, but every Senator did support the bill, so it will likely pass.

There were student seated in the room- filling it to capacity. Students were also standing and watching through the windows from outside the building. To banners, one 10’ long and one 30’ long, with signatures opposing the Pacifica Forum’s advocation of violence and hate speech (the first with 300 and the second with 600-700). Mentioned also, was the the facebook group “UO Students and Community against Pacifica Forum” with nearly 2000 members. A sum of students greater than the margins of voting for most all ASUO (student government) positions.

Passionate speeches from students cleared up any uncertainty about the issue of safety and Pacifica forum… that the forums presence is a threat and needs to leave campus.

Human Rights Advocates Face Six Months in Federal Prison

anonymous — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 18:39:32 -0700

On Monday, January 25, 2010, four human rights advocates are scheduled to begin federal trials for carrying the protest against the School of the Americas onto the Fort Benning military base in Georgia. This school, re-named the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, is a controversial U.S. Army training school for Latin American soldiers. Each defendant faces up to six months in prison and a $5,000 fine for this act of nonviolent civil disobedience.

The four were among the thousands who gathered on November 19-21, 2009 outside the gates of Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia to demand a change in U.S.-Latin America foreign policy and the closure of the School of the Americas (SOA/WHINSEC). The group peacefully crossed onto Ft. Benning, site of the school, while thousands stood vigil at the gates of Fort Benning in memory of those killed by graduates of the institution. The “SOA 4” are facing up to 6 months in prison and a $5,000 fine. They are:

Nancy Gwin, a long-time activist from Syracuse, New York
Father Louie Vitale, an Air Force veteran and Franciscan Priest from Oakland, California
Michael Walli, a member of the Catholic Worker movement from Washington, DC
Ken Hayes, a representative on the SOA Watch Grassroots Council from Austin, Texas

Those arrested at the demonstration crossed the line to protest the school’s lack of transparency, its historical ties to brutal dictatorships throughout Latin America and the ever-growing number of human rights abuses and crimes committed by its graduates

The SOA/WHINSEC made headlines in 1996 when the Pentagon released training manuals used at the school that advocated torture, extortion and execution. The school was in the news again last year, when its graduates led a military coup to overthrow of the democratically elected government of Honduras in June 2009.

The defendants are scheduled to begin trial at the Federal Court in Columbus, Georgia at 9am on Monday before Judge G. Mallon Faircloth, known for handing down stiff sentences to opponents of the SOA/ WHINSEC. Since protests against the SOA/WHINSEC began 19 years ago, 243 people have served sentences of up to two years for nonviolent civil disobedience.

SOA Watch is a nonviolent grassroots movement that works through creative protest and resistance, legislative and media work to stand in solidarity with the people of Latin America, to close the SOA/WHINSEC and to change oppressive U.S. foreign policy that institutions like the SOA represent. We are grateful to our sisters and brothers throughout Latin America and the the Caribbean for their inspiration and the invitation to join them in their struggle for economic and social justice.

Administrating Fascism

anonymous — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 18:41:14 -0700

I am concerned about the increasing use of authority by the University of Oregon…

But lets contextualize this, the Eugene Police Department defended two of its own, when they were sexually raping and abusing women. The Officer, Maganya, would demand sexual favors or give out traffic fines.

In 2007, Ian VanOrnum, was electrocuted, twice, while laying face down on the ground.

in 2009, a Chinese student was tazed by an officer, in his own home. Because the officer shouted orders, the Chinese student didn’t understand, as a immersion student.

Now flash back to the University. The Pacifica forum holds a meeting on the ‘National Socialist Movement’ (The new name of the American Nazi Party) in january, two uniformed DPS (Department of Public Safety- campus cops) officers lurk the background. After the event one officer remarked “at least I got paid to be here”.

One month later, Pacifica forum responds to it’s own hatefulness, reveals that it is deeply prejudiced. There were 2 plainclothes officers in the crowd. Later 4 uniformed DPS officers.

One week later, Pacifica Forum hosts a presentation on the Swastika, 4 EPD (Eugene Police Department -city cops) and one Sergeant.

The campus seemingly escalated from two unarmed observers to armed, trigger happy hired guns in two months. I question this escalation and its necessity, I say this is far to extreme. It was escalated as a result of the protesters, not the presenters. The students are being targeted! The people literally standing for justice, against nazis are surrounded by thugs with guns. Despicable.

The campus administration authorized this rapid increase of force, escalating the protests into a police-state. That is, worth more investigation and reprehension.

'We Won,' Says One Pacifica Forum Protestor

anonymous — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 18:42:15 -0700

The forum met this week in Agate hall. At least one hundred demonstrators marched from the EMU to Agate Hall to attend the forum. The room was at capacity by the time I arrived, so my information is all second hand and somewhat sketchy at best. More details and photos will be added soon. What we know so far:

A number of people (8ish?) were escorted from the building by the department of public safety for disturbing the event.
Presenter Jimmy Mar left before he was able to speak. Him along with another man sieg heiled while leaving.

While the the debate went on inside, a crowd waited outside the “full” hall. A class of middle school students joined the rest of the crowd (comprised mostly of college students) to show their disproval of hate. The middle schoolers engaged other protesters to learn about why the older students cared about having Nazis on campus. Erika, a soft-spoken demonstrator, explained she was embarrassed that the UO served as a home to Nazis. The middle schoolers responded that they too did not understand why someone would hate their Jewish friends. (To be fair, I don’t understand either and I’m about to graduate college.)

“Why don’t we just ignore them?,” read a flier that magically appeared in my hand while wandering through the crowd. “Ignoring hate groups allows them to expand unchecked, threatening our freedom and safety. So, by not dealing with hate group sympathizers, we only allow their negative thoughts and ideologies to permeate our communities and society.” Just something to think about.

The Pacifica Forum Is Full of Terrible People

anonymous — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 18:46:59 -0700

Regular Forum attendees for the most part seem to have no idea what they are talking about. This lady showed us that the Sieg Heil is just a hand sign and couldn’t think of any reason why this could be understood as offensive.

Katie, a UO senior, is surrounded by several of her supporters as she tried to explain to Valdas Anelauskas that rape is not a trivial matter. Pacifica Forum speaker, Anelauskas had previously described a local member of the community as “too ugly to rape.”

Katie was just one of many who came out to demonstrate against the hateful ideas promoted through the Pacifica Forum. In addition to trivializing rape, members of the forum also regularly express various anti-Semitic, racist and homophobic ideas.

Members generally have no idea what they are talking about.

Other protesters in attendance accused Anelauskas and the Pacifica Forum as a whole of being neo-Nazis. Anelauskas denied this allegation, but why argue semantics, whether he adopts the name or not he is still a terrible person.

UO policy allows ex-professors to rent rooms for community events. When Etter originally founded the group in 1994 it had a left leaning bias, but perhaps as Orval lost his hearing he stopped understanding the hateful ideas that are now being promoted at a forum originally started to “provide information and points of view” on “war and peace, militarism and pacifism, violence and non-violence.”

The forum today was a cluster fuck. Regular attendees of the Pacifica Forum were feeding off the high emotions in the room and didn’t seem to care what was said. Like misbehaving children they just seemed happy to be getting some attention.

Luckily for us, the spotlight on the group brought by the Black Tea Society caught ASUO President Emma Callaway’s eye. During the meeting she asked that Forum meet someplace else because the student union is supposed to be a place where all students feel welcome.

The general consensus of the room was that the Pacifica Forum’s hateful message is not welcome at the University of Oregon.

UO Students Demand a Sweat-Free Campus

anonymous — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 10:11:39 -0700

A dozen students marched from the UO Amphitheater to the University’s marketing department to demand no more UO licensed Russell Clothing. The new student group Step Up, Oregon! is raising awareness of Russell Athletic’s poor human rights record.

Atheist Group Forms on UO Campus

anonymous — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 10:14:55 -0700

Originally organized by a small group of students early this year, AHA! has grown into an organization of over sixty members in less than a week of campaigning. Currently under review to become an officially-recognized ASUO student organization, AHA! was created in order to support the growing number of atheists and nonreligious students on the University of Oregon campus.

“We formed AHA! with many goals in mind, but most importantly, we want to serve as a support system for campus atheists, agnostics, and religious skeptics. We want people to know that atheism isn’t something to hide–we want to make it something that people are proud of, something that isn’t shunned,” says Lucy Gubbins, one of the founders of the group.

According to a 2006 University of Minnesota study, atheists are the least trusted minority group in the United States. A 2007 Gallup poll recorded that only 45% of those surveyed would vote for a qualified atheist political candidate; this score was lower than that of an otherwise qualified homosexual candidate, and a full 10% lower than the scores women, blacks, Jews, or Mormons received. No minority scored lower than atheists.

Despite the societal stigma attached to atheism, 25% of Americans between the age of 18 and 29 identify with no religion, doubling since 1986, according to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. The University of Oregon does not currently recognize any student organization geared toward nonreligious students.

“Being the first group of its kind, we expected that it would be difficult to organize around something that people commonly misunderstand,” another founding member, Jeff Kline, says, “but these are just the kind of challenges that we look forward to and that we find necessary in order for atheists to get the recognition they deserve.”

The group’s first meeting will focus on orienting new members to the organization’s vision and future goals, and garnering input and ideas. AHA! is also hoping to begin organizing a week-long celebration for the National Day of Reason, in early May.

Affinity Groups

anonymous — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

What is an affinity group?

An affinity group is a small group of 5 to 20 people who work together autonomously on direct actions or other projects. You can form an affinity group with your friends, people from your community, workplace, or organization.

Affinity groups challenge top-down decision-making and organizing, and empower those involved to take creative direct action. Affinity groups allow people to “be” the action they want to see by giving complete freedom and decision-making power to the affinity group. Affinity groups by nature are decentralized and non-hierarchical, two important principles of anarchist organizing and action. The affinity group model was first used by anarchists in Spain in the late 19th and early 20th century, and was re-introduced to radical direct action by anti-nuclear activists during the 1970s, who used decentralized non-violent direct action to blockade roads, occupy spaces and disrupt “business as usual” for the nuclear and war makers of the US. Affinity groups have a long and interesting past, owing much to the anarchists and workers of Spain and the anarchists and radicals today who use affinity groups, non-hierarchical structures, and consensus decision making in direct action and organizing.

Affinity Group Roles (in a protest)

There are many roles that one could possibly fill. These roles include:

Medical - An affinity group may want to have someone who is a trained street medic who can deal with any medical or health issues during the action.

Legal observer - If there are not already legal observers for an action, it may be important to have people not involved in the action taking notes on police conduct and possible violations of activists rights.

Media - If you are doing an action which plans to draw media, a person in the affinity group could be empowered to talk to the media and act as a spokesperson.

Action Elf/Vibes-watcher - This is someone who would help out with the general wellness of the group: water, massages, and encouragement through starting a song or cheer. This is not a role is necessary, but may be particularly helpful in day long actions where people might get tired or irritable as the day wears on.

Traffic - If it is a moving affinity group, it may be necessary to have people who are empowered to stop cars at intersections and in general watch out for the safety of people on the streets from cars and other vehicles.

Arrest-able members - This depends on what kind of direct action you are doing. Some actions may require a certain number of people willing to get arrested, or some parts of an action may need a minimum number of arrest-ables. Either way, it is important to know who is doing the action and plans on getting arrested.

Jail Support - Again, this is only if you have an affinity group who has people getting arrested. This person has all the arrestees contact information and will go to the jail, talk to and work with lawyers, keep track of who got arrested etc.

Affinity groups are not just useful within a protest or direct action setting, this form of organization can be used for a wide variety of purposes as the history of affinity groups below illustrates.

History of Affinity Groups

The idea of affinity groups comes out of the anarchist and workers movement that was created in the late 19th century and fought fascism in Spain during the Spanish Civil War. The Spanish Anarchist movement provides an exhilarating example of a movement, and the actual possibility of a society based on decentralized organization, direct democracy and the principles behind them.

Small circles of good friends, called “tertulias” would meet at cafes to discuss ideas and plan actions. In 1888, a period of intense class conflict in Europe and of local insurrection and struggle in Spain, the Anarchist Organization of the Spanish Region made this traditional form (tertulias) the basis of its organization.

Decades later, the Iberian Anarchist Federation, which contained 50,000 activists, organized into affinity groups and confederated into local, regional, and national councils. Wherever several FAI affinity groups existed, they formed a local federation. Local federations were coordinated by committees were made up of one mandated delegate from each affinity group. Mandated delegates were sent from local federations to regional committees and finally to the Peninsular Committee. Affinity groups remained autonomous as they carried out education, organized and supported local struggles. The intimacy of the groups made police infiltration difficult.

The idea of large-scale affinity group based organization was planted in the United States on April 30, 1977 when 2,500 people, organized into affinity groups, occupied the Seabrook, New Hampshire nuclear power plant. The growing anti-nuclear power and disarmament movements adopted this mode, and used it in many successful actions throughout the late 1970s and 1980s. Since then, it has been used by the Central America solidarity movement, lesbian/gay liberation movement, Earth First and earth liberation movement, and many others.

Most recently, affinity groups have been used in the mass actions in Seattle for the WTO and Washington DC for the IMF and World Bank, as well as Philadelphia and Los Angles around the Republican and Democratic National Conventions.

What is a Cluster and a Spokescouncil?

A cluster is a grouping of affinity groups that come together to work on a certain task or part of a larger action. Thus, a cluster might be responsible for blockading an area, organizing one day of a multi-day action, or putting together and performing a mass street theater performance. Clusters could be organized around where affinity groups are from (example: Texas cluster), an issue or identity (examples: student cluster or anti-sweatshop cluster), or action interest (examples: street theater or [black bloc]).

A spokescouncil is the larger organizing structure used in the affinity group model to coordinate a mass action. Each affinity group (or cluster) empowers a spoke (representative) to go to a spokescouncil meeting to decide on important issues for the action. For instance, affinity groups need to decide on a legal/jail strategy, possible tactical issues, meeting places, and many other logistics. A spokescouncil does not take away an individual affinity group’s autonomy within an action; affinity groups make there own decisions about what they want to do on the streets.

How to start an affinity group

An affinity group could be a relationship among people that lasts for years among a group of friends and activists, or it could be a week long relationship based around a single action. Either way, it is important to join an affinity group that is best suited to you and your interests.

If you are forming an affinity group in your city or town, find friends or fellow activists who have similar issue interests, and thus would want to go to similar actions. Also, look for people who would be willing to use similar tactics - if you want to do relatively high risk lockdowns, someone who does not want to be in that situation may not want to be in the affinity group. That person could do media or medic work, but it may not be best if they are completely uncomfortable around certain tactics of direct action.

If you are looking to join an affinity group at a mass action, first find out what affinity groups open to new members and which ones are closed. For many people, affinity groups are based on trusting relationships based around years of friendship and work, thus they might not want people they don’t know in their affinity group. Once you find which affinity groups are open, look for ones that have an issue interest or action tactic that you are drawn to.

What can an affinity group do?

Anything!!! They can be used for mass or smaller scale actions. Affinity groups can be used to drop a banner, blockade a road, provide back-up for other affinity groups, do street theater, block traffic riding bikes, organize a tree sit, [confront the police, strategic property destruction], change the message on a massive billboard, play music in a radical marching band or sing in a revolutionary choir, etc. There can even be affinity groups who take on certain tasks in an action. For instance, there could be a roving affinity group made up of street medics, or an affinity group who brings food and water to people on the streets.

What makes affinity groups so effective for actions is that they can remain creative and independent and plan out their own action without an organization or person dictating to them what can and can’t be done. Thus, there are an endless amount of possibilities for what affinity groups can do. Be creative and remember: direct action gets the goods!

Angry Reactions: Neo-Consumerism

Matt Silbernagel — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

I usually don’t have strong feelings of distaste for anything, but every now and then I get really worked up about things. Such was the case last weekend when I was standing in line for food, and the guy in front of me went off on a rant about the ethical treatment of animals to the person behind the counter. He didn’t have to say more than a few sentences before it was obvious his intent was not to reprimand the shop for running out of tofu or spout out a coherent argument; rather, he was seeking self-fulfillment through the degradation of the worker. It was then that I looked down and saw his shoes: old cowboy boots, made of leather. Because of his blind rage, I clearly wasn’t going to make any impact by challenging him there about how his choice of foot apparel didn’t correlate with the words coming from his mouth. So, I just smiled and went home to write this blurb about trend hippies, what a friend of mine calls “neo-consumerists”. The corporate system we live in is inherently oppressive in nature; it discourages free thought in lieu of boosting profit and maintenance of the status quo. Thus, the corporate system can be called fascist without hesitation. But what happens when the system molds itself to control the thoughts of the subversive population? When the seditious themselves become targeted customers of corporate heartlessness, we arrive in the present, where being “borderline socialist” becomes the norm, even as those who embrace this trendy, brand-name ideology support a system fundamentally at odds with true leftist ideals. In the reality of neo-consumerism that surrounds us, organic hemp tee-shirts are made in East Asian sweatshops to sell to susceptible “activist” youth, and self-actualized moral vegetarians carry around leather purses and iPhones adorned with peace symbols. We’ve entered a new era of corporate manipulation. Consequently, we’ve entered a new era of fascism. Fascism is an idea neo-consumerists like to throw around a lot. Phrases like “fascist propaganda,” “fascist oppression,” and “corporate fascism” are tossed in the wind without thought to what meaning lies behind them. It’s because of this that the word has lost all substantial value, since those who use it are the very patrons of the ideology they claim to despise. The resurgence of this defunct and oppressive belief structure isn’t a good omen and says something about the concerns of the masses. When a community is more interested in wearing the “Save Darfur” shirt for aesthetic pleasure than with actually fighting on the front lines for change, society loses. With environmentalism becoming an everyday product, the public is not at all hidden from the facts of greenwashing companies. Rather, reports like Greenpeace’s Guide to Greener Electronics attempt to give consumers a relatively objective view on how many prominent companies with pro-conservation programs (Apple, Microsoft, Nintendo, etc.) measure up to Greenpeace’s high standards. This isn’t to discredit companies like Apple’s progress, but rather to give them a little nudge to get them further along by pointing out the hazardous chemicals contained within the accessories we use every day. However, the ignorance and affluence of the American version of neo-consumerism are the main problems that keep the facts hidden. Complacency is easy to manage, and the façade of important daily tasks consumes most of the population’s endeavors. Inconsequential ordeals take up too much time for the elite, and, therefore, thinking and seeking the facts takes extra effort which self-important individuals put off and replace with easy labels (e.g. 100% organic) that they can stamp on their forehead to make them seem more in tune with reality and peace. This is not supporting a cause; it’s furthering the cause of the elite few of this nation. Don’t let corporations capitalize on this narcissistic view and further the creation of the trend hippy culture which is already adhered to by a sizeable portion of the emerging adult population. Stop neo-consumerism.

“Peace may sound simple - one beautiful word - but it requires everything we have, every quality, every strength, every dream, every high ideal.” -Writer/Musician Yehudi Menuhin

Anti WOPR Action

tangent — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

In the early hours of Tuesday, Nov. 11th, Jasmine Zimmer-Stucky ascended a pine on state capitol grounds and began an urban tree sit in protest of the Bureau of Land Management’s Western Oregon Plan Revisions (WOPR). She descended on Friday, Nov. 14th in order to speak at a rally of over 200 anti-WOPR protestors on the capitol steps. The Bureau of Land Management claim on their website that the basic principles behind the WOPR include managing natural resources “for human use and a healthy environment” and management that is “focused on ecological principles to reduce the need for single resource or single species management”. However, several statistics regarding the WOPR do not support these claims. According to Oregon Wild’s® forest expert Doug Heiken, logging on Oregon BLM lands would be increased upwards of 375%, and old growth logging would be catastrophically scaled forward. Additionally, approx. 180 million tons more carbon would be released into the atmosphere as opposed to a “no-harvest” alternative. Statistics such as these have incensed Oregon environmental groups, who banded together in the WOPR and Beyond Coalition to organize the anti-WOPR rally and garner popular opposition to the new forest plan. Trip Jennings, a member of the radical advocacy group Cascadia Rising Tide, claimed, “The number one reason to oppose the WOPR is that it represents a forest policy that The WOPR ignores all of the most progressive and sustainable ways to get our forest products and reverts back to a time when we thought the trees were endless, and we could clear-cut forever without any repercussions.” Cascadia Rising Tide is an activist collective formed to address the root causes of climate change. Jasmine Zimmer-Stucky is also a member of Cascadia Rising Tide, as well as a University of Oregon student. She claimed that during the tree-sit, “the support that poured in from all over was very amazing, at times almost overwhelming… My middle school sent a big card, with things like “I’m glad you’re doing what you’re doing, I love big trees.” Their anecdotes were very inspiring. Also having people from the capitol building come out, say hello, and say they were proud of us was very reaffirming.” Regarding the rally, she said, “I thought that the rally did a good job of not only exposing the WOPR, but exposing a host of bad forest policy that we need to keep fighting.” So, now that you’re all fired up with talk of rallies and protests, what can you do to help stop the WOPR and bad forest policy across the state of Oregon? One approach is to contact the Obama administration via web; after all, our new president has promised to address environmental issues in his policy. If you want to get a little more “grassroots” with your approach, a good place to start is Google: look up the WOPR and Beyond Coalition, to discover various Oregon environmental justice groups that work to prevent harmful logging practices.

Book Review: Obsolete Communism: The Left Wing Alternative By Daniel Cohn-Bendit

Johannes Pedersen — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

This was an excellent book, first and foremost it is an account of the May 68’ uprising in France by one of it’s leaders. The uprising was a spontaneous expression of popular discontent that started in the universities and boiled over into the French working class, nearly unseating the government. The book explains the students and workers roles in the uprising. It also analyzes the reactions of the State and the counter-revolutionary role played by the trade unions and the Communist Party. At the end of the book is an analysis of the Russia Revolution in which the author argues structure and methods of the Bolshevik Party were counterproductive and that the Party flagged behind the masses, that the authoritarian nature of the bureaucracy that developed was due to the organization of the Party not solely due to Stalin’s efforts, as some have claimed. Ironically, many of the facts cited to back up his claim are quoted directly from Trotsky’s “History of the Russian Revolution” (Trotsky was a prominent figure in the Party during the Revolution). I do have a number of criticisms of the book however. First, scattered throughout the book are phrases like: we are against authority, or against power, or leaders etc. If you take the time to define these terms then holding positions such as those becomes absurd. If authority is defined as the imposition of our will on another, then a revolution, a riot, or even a protest makes use of authority. Certainly we are not against these things; therefore it doesn’t make sense to say that we are against authority. The same sort of logic could be applied to power, or leaders. This way of framing our ideas is a problem that is rampant in the anarchist movement, and it seems, among the left-communists as well. My second criticism of the book is its rejection of the vanguard. Don’t mistake me here I am not embracing Lenin’s tyrannical notion of the party, the vanguard is merely that segment of the population which acts first. Revolutionary organization’s role, in my opinion, is to initiate popular struggle and to act as a sustaining force when the initial popular enthusiasm has subsided, to prevent the revolution from being taken over by totalitarian elements within the revolutionary milieu. Perhaps the greatest gem of insight contained within the book, and perhaps the only new theoretical idea presented in the book is the analysis of the universities role under capitalism namely, the production of a managerial elite. Basically what that means is that the purpose of college is not to bring knowledge to the population but rather to turn out a class of people with the ability to make the day-to-day decisions that keep the wheels turning. Well worth picking up.

ELF Response

The Student Insurgent — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

A right-wing publication on campus recently published an article titled “The Student Insurgent loves terrorism”¹. We have a policy of ignoring them, however we felt it was important to correct false impressions that people who read the article may have gathered about the Insurgent’s stance on terrorism or what the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) is about. We want to begin by letting the author of the article above know that we are aware that the only reason he used the title that he did was to provoke, to cause anger and bad feeling and the only reason he said the things they did was because they are ignorant. We want them to know that we understand and that we forgive them, we know they are only poor, misguided souls and we hope that they take the opportunity we are giving them to read over what we have to say and honestly consider the arguments presented. That said the main audience of this essay are those students who may have been confused by the original article. To begin with the Insurgent staff don’t hold any common positions beyond those printed in the mission statement. Some of us are committed pacifists; others don’t necessarily foreclose on any tactic and rather select strategies and tactics based on their effectiveness. However, none of the Student Insurgent contributors who identify as revolutionaries would support what they consider to be terrorism, namely using or threatening violence against civilians in order to achieve political or religious goals. Trotsky put the attitude our staff hold about terrorism best:

“If we oppose terrorist acts, it is only because individual revenge does not satisfy us. The account we have to settle with the capitalist system is too great to be presented to some functionary called a minister. To learn to see all the crimes against humanity, all the indignities to which the human body and spirit are subjected, as the twisted outgrowths and expressions of the existing social system, in order to direct all our energies into a collective struggle against this system – that is the direction in which the burning desire for revenge can find its highest moral satisfaction.” -Leon Trotsky: Terrorism (1911)

It must be remembered however that the term “terrorism” is, in reality, nothing more than a convenient way for the powerful to slander dissident groups, devoid of any actual meaning or substance. In reality it is a justification of government passing draconian laws strangling your rights. The author of the article said that the ELF qualifies as a terrorist group because they employ violence and fear, we however believe that it takes more than the use of violence to make a group a terrorist group, surely they would not refer to the American revolutionaries, who certainly made use of violence, fighting for their independence from Britain as terrorists? As for fear that is simply a byproduct of using violence. The article also referred to ELF actions as “ineffective” and “counter-productive” to prove this they point to the fact that some ELF targets have insurance, which means they are able to rebuild after an attack let’s see what the ELF Press Office has to say about this:

“A common argument against the actions of the ELF has been that each target has been covered by insurance so the given entity fails to suffer little, if any, economic loss. While it is largely true that most if not all of the ELF targets have been insured it is completely ludicrous to believe that insurance companies can suffer losses of hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars without greatly raising the rates of insurance. If the given entity or even industry was targeted repeatedly by the ELF, insurance companies would either cease to cover these entities or raise the cost too high for a profitable business.

Of course there is a lot more that goes into how effective the group is, but that is a subject for a future article. The last argument the article brings up is that ELF actions are “insane”. To this we can only respond that we rely on a clean, sustainable environment for the survival of our species, and in the face of losing this, is any action insane?

Technomancer’s Note: I was unable to find the origin of this article or a link to it, so unfortunately you won’t be able to find more context easily. If you can find a link to this article, please send it to insurgentuo@gmail.com ↩︎

Of Budgets and Bureaucrats

anonymous — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

“The purpose of the incidental fee is not to save the world.” -Sam Dotters-Katz

Just before our yearly budget hearing when a committee from the student government decides how it will allocate funding to the various student groups, the Oregon Daily Emerald published an article stating that “committee members” (of the PFC) mentioned that the Insurgent mails off campus and because that “takes money off campus” they “anticipated a contentious meeting”. Let’s cut through the bullshit for a moment, what they are doing there is threatening to cut our funding; presumably the excuse they would give is that this somehow does not benefit the university. With deceptiveness typical of establishment media the Emerald only mentioned that we send to prisoners, failing to mention that we also send to organizations and individuals. The Emerald also put forward no significant effort contact us for comment, presenting only the opinion of anonymous student government bureaucrats. So much for balanced reporting. To begin with we at the Insurgent heartily protest these accusations and threats. First of all our mailings allows us to maintain the Left Alternative Media Project (L.A.M.P.) a radical lending library open to all students (located in the EMU, Suite One). In exchange for receiving our paper we receive the free books, magazines, newsletters, newspapers, zines, newsletters, etc. that allow us to maintain the L.A.M.P. where anyone may enjoy what we have to offer. Second sending to prisoners allows students a unique opportunity to hear the voices of those whose lives and suffering are subject to a blackout in the mainstream media. Nowhere else would UO students be able to find this information, perhaps that is what the authorities find so threatening. Furthermore we reject this logic, which claims that university should exist in a bubble and that it has no duty to the wider community. The university must act not only to enrich itself; it must also act to enrich the communities around it. Sending our paper off campus is part of doing this. In addition to all this the measure of newspapers success is the number of readers it has, obviously institutional blocks to our success are unacceptable. But we at the Insurgent don’t believe for one moment that that this most recent attack on our paper has anything to do with the reasons given. It is nothing more than an attempt by the Dotter-Katz administration to push their right-wing agenda by acting to silence left-wing voices on campus. ( As of the time this goes to print OSPIRG has had it’s funding completely cut). In a phrase, this is censorship disguised as bureaucracy. These suits want to turn you into another cog in machine, a mindless technician for empire. We want to make space where you have enough material comforts and free time to explore your potentials. The lines are drawn. Now the question is: which side are you on?

Security Culture

anonymous — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The first step in recognizing security risks in a community is working towards creating a security culture. Below we have compiled some relevant materials and links that should be used in conducting security workshops and educating activists that you work with.

As our direct action movement becomes more effective, government harassment will only increase. To minimize the destructiveness of this government harassment, it is imperative that we create a “security culture” within our movement. Violations of security culture include behavior is inappropriate because it intensifies government harassment, jeopardizes the freedom of other activists, and destroys the trust within the movement.

Community Organizing and State Repression

It was not that long ago that discussions about security culture were seen as not relevant to the vast majority of community organizers. As long as one didn’t “break the law” it was assumed that social freedoms in North America and Europe would allow for the expression of dissent without a rise in repression. A number of events have conspired since the late nineties to change the landscape of organizing considerably.

New legislation - the PATRIOT Act in the US and Bill C-36 in Canada - which have been sold to the public as required to fight the spectre of terrorism in a post-911 world, serve double-duty in giving the state new laws with which to crack down on internal dissent. A rise in state-hyped racist hysteria, has made community organizers from middle eastern origins (or other “suspicious” backgrounds), increasingly targets of incarceration without cause, and other abuse at the hands of governments eager to deflect attention from the real issues of failing economies and unpopular wars. In many countries, governments have enacted laws to make it illegal to work with overseas organizations now declared “terrorist” - putting at risk communities who have worked to support liberation fighters around the world.

It follows that those who fight to change the world will be met with resistance by those who do not want it changed. One does not have to participate in extralegal activities to raise the interest of state security forces (whether those be local, regional or national agencies). Security culture must no longer be thought of as merely the domain of those who might break unjust laws - but as something that is part of the organizing toolbox as a mechanism for community self-defense.

The guidelines presented here are designed to enhance your personal safety as well as the overall effectiveness of our movements. By adopting a security culture, we can limit or neutralize counterintelligence operations meant to disrupt our political organizing, be it mainstream or underground.

Towards an Expanded Definition of Security Culture

Creating secure communities is about more than being educated about the state and its security forces. Fundamentally, it means creating working dynamics of respect, education and inclusion in all our work. Building strong communities that act in solidarity with one another is the best protection against infiltration, disruption and other conditions of repression.

So what is a security culture? It’s a culture where the people know their rights and, more importantly, assert them in all situations. Those who belong to a security culture also know what behaviour compromises security and are quick to work with people who exhibit insecure or oppressive behaviour. Security consciousness becomes a culture when a community as a whole adopts this awareness and demonstrates that those behaviours which violate security are unacceptable.

Security Culture Means Challenging Oppression

Security culture is about more than just targeting specific behaviours in individuals such as bragging, gossiping or lying. It is also about checking movement behaviours and practices as a whole to ensure that oppressive practices aren’t feeding into intelligence operations being carried out against our community.

Within the histories of groups targeted by COINTELPRO (such as AIM and the BPP), and certainly within the animal rights and environmental movements, there are many example of how oppressive behaviours created conditions ripe for FBI manipulation.

Underlying sexism in some groups has meant that women trying to raise security concerns are not taken seriously, or (on the other end), are not suspected as informers simply because they are women. A tokenistic approach to recruitment has lead socialist organizations to bring in new members who fit their ‘ideal’ of what the working class should be - only have them to later turn out working for the British Home Office.

Racism, sexism and homophobia in the movement spread division that create overall weaknesses and create openings easily manipulatable by state operatives. Exclusion can make those people who feel marginalized by group practices more open to infiltrators.

Obviously, our movements still have a lot of work to do before we have satisfactorily addressed issues of oppression - but what is important here is a recognition that oppressive behaviours feed into poor community security.

(In)secure Practices

The following section was originally written for an audience engaged, or on the periphery of extralegal activity, and so focuses on “underground” groups. We would like to add that the same rules apply to discussions about individuals involved in or providing support groups considered “terrorist” by western governments (but who are in actual fact, liberation fighters at odds with US foreign policy). It is generally good practice to limit discussion about movement individuals where you are unsure what information about them is “public” knowledge.

As community organizers, a lot of activists like to verbally engage with each other and have no trouble spending hours discussing theory, tactics, and strategy. This is an essential part of building our analysis and work, but in some cases this can put ourselves or others in jeopardy.

What Not To Say

To begin with, there are certain things that are inappropriate to discuss. These things include:

your own or someone else’s involvement with an underground group
someone else’s desire to get involved with such a group
asking others if they are a member of an underground group
your own or someone else’s participation in any action that was illegal
someone else’s advocacy for such actions
your plans or someone else’s plans for a future action

Essentially, it is a bad idea to speak about an individual’s involvement (past, present or future) with illegal activities, or with activities that may raise the interest of the state (such as advocacy of certain groups or tactics). These are unacceptable topics of discussion regardless of whether they are rumor, speculation or personal knowledge.

Please note: this is not to say that it is incorrect to speak about direct action in general terms - just be sure that you don’t link individual activists to specific actions or groups. It is perfectly legal, secure and desirable that people speak out in support of all forms of resistance (though if you’re involved with illegal activity, it is probably best that you don’t openly advocate for breaking the law as that alone can raise state interest in your life).

Three Exceptions

There are only three times that it is acceptable to speak about specific actions that may be against the law. These are the only situations when it is appropriate to speak about your own or someone else’s involvement or intent to commit an illegal act.

The first situation would be if you were planning an action with other members of your small group (your “cell” or “affinity group”). These discussions should never take place over the Internet (e-mail), phone line, through the mail, or in an activist’s home or car, as these places and forms of communication are frequently monitored. The only people who should hear this discussion would include those who are actively participating in the action. Anyone who is not involved does not need to know and, therefore, should not know.

The second exception occurs after an activist has been arrested and brought to trial. If s/he is found guilty, this activist can freely speak of the actions for which s/he was convicted. However, s/he must never give information that would help the authorities determine who else participated in illegal activities.

The third exception is for anonymous letters and interviews with the media. This must be done carefully and without compromising security. Advice on secure communication techniques can be found at elsewhere on this site.

Bottom-line Security

If you are engaged in activity that is considered illegal, it is best to take a lesson from veteran activists of the direct action movements and only allow a select few to know about your activity. Those few people should consist of only the individuals who you are doing work and actions with and AND NO ONE ELSE!

The reason for these security precautions is obvious: if people don’t know anything, they can’t talk about it. When activists who do not share the same serious consequences know who did an illegal direct action, they are far more likely to talk after being harassed and intimidated by the authorities, because they are not the ones who will go to jail. Even those people who are trustworthy can often be tricked by the authorities into revealing damaging and incriminating information. It is safest for all cell members to keep their involvement in the group amongst themselves. The fewer people who know, the less evidence there is in the long run.

Security Violating Behaviors

In an attempt to impress others, activists may behave in ways that compromise security. Some people do this frequently - they are habitually gossiping and bragging. Some activists say inappropriate things only when they consume alcohol. Many activists make occasional breaches of security because there was a momentary temptation to say something or hint at something that shouldn’t have been said or implied. In most every situation, the desire to be accepted is the root cause.

Those people who tend to be the greatest security risks are those activists who have low self-esteem and strongly desire the approval of their peers. Certainly it is natural to seek friendship and recognition for our efforts, but it is imperative that we keep these desires in check so we do not jeopardize the safety of other activists or ourselves. People who place their desire for friendship over the importance of the cause can do serious damage to our security.

The following are examples of security-violating behaviours:

Lying: To impress others, liars claim to have done illegal actions. Such lies not only compromise the person’s security – as cops will not take what is said as a lie– but also hinders solidarity and trust.
Gossip & Rumors: Some people think they can win friends because they are privy to special information. These gossips will tell others about who did what action or, if they don’t know who did it, guess at who they think did what actions or just spread rumors about who did it. This sort of talk is very damaging. People need to remember that rumors are all that are needed to instigate an investigation, or even lay charges. New anti-terrorist law in both Canada and the United States allows state security forces to carry out raids on individuals based on nothing more than hearsay evidence.
Bragging: Some people who partake in illegal direct action might be tempted to brag about it to their friends. This not only jeopardizes the bragger’s security, but also that of the other people involved with the action (as they may be suspected by association). As well the people who s/he told can be charged as accessories after the fact.
Indirect-Bragging: Indirect braggers are people who make a big production on how they want to remain anonymous, avoid protests, and stay “underground.” They might not come out and say that they do illegal direct action, but they make sure everyone within earshot knows they are up to something. They are no better than braggers, but they try to be more sophisticated about it by pretending to maintain security. However, if they were serious about security, they would just make up a good excuse as to why they are not as active, or why they can’t make it to the protest . Concealing sensitive information from even trusted comrades is far better than jeopardizing underground work.

Self-Education Towards Liberation

With the above information about security, it should be easier to spot those activists who compromise our movement’s security. So what do we do with people who display these behaviours? Do we shun or expel them from our groups and projects? Actually, no - not for the first security violation, at least.

The unfortunate truth is there are some security-ignorant people in the movement and others who have possibly been raised in a “scene” that thrives on bragging and gossiping. It doesn’t mean these people are bad, but it does mean they need to inform themselves and learn about personal and group security. Even seasoned activists make mistakes when there is a general lack of security consciousness in our groups. And that’s where those of you reading this can help. We must ALWAYS act to inform persons whose behaviour breaches security. If someone you know is bragging about doing an action or spreading security-compromising gossip, it is your responsibility to explain to her or him why that sort of talk violates security and is inappropriate.

You should strive to share this knowledge in a manner that encourages the person’s understanding and changes her/his behaviour. It should be done without damaging the person’s pride. Show your sincere interest in helping him/her to become a more effective activist. Keep your humility and avoid presenting a superior, “holier than-thou” attitude. Such an attitude can raise an individual’s defenses and prevent them from listening to and using the advice offered. The goal of addressing these issues with others is to reduce insecure behaviour, rather than showing how much more security-conscious you are.

Share your concerns and knowledge in private, so that the person does not feel as if they are being publicly humiliated. Addressing the person as soon as possible after the security violation increases effectiveness.

If each of us remains responsible for discussing security information with people who slip up, we can dramatically improve security in our groups and activities. When people recognize that lying, gossiping, bragging, and inappropriate debriefing damages both themselves and others, these behaviours will soon end. By developing a culture where breaches of security are pointed out and discouraged, all sincere activists will quickly understand.

Dealing With Chronic Security Problems

So what do we do with activists who repeatedly violate security precautions even after being informed several times? Unfortunately for them, the best thing to do is to cut them loose. Discuss the issue openly and ask them to leave your meetings, basecamps and organizations. With law enforcement budgets on the increase and with courts handing down long sentences for political “crimes”, the stakes are too high to allow chronic security offenders to work among us.

By creating a security culture, we have an effective defense against informers and agents who try to infiltrate groups. Imagine an informer who, every time they ask another activist about their activities, receives information about security. It would frustrate the informer’s work. When other activists discovered that she/he continued to violate security precautions after being repeatedly informed, there would be grounds for isolating the person from our groups. And that would be one less informer for us to deal with!

ADOPT A SECURITY CULTURE NOW! Activists are restless and resistance is on the rise. Some people are adopting radical and confrontational tactics. The more we organize and are effective, the more police forces continue to escalate their activities against us. For direct action movements to continue, we need to consider our security more seriously. Good security should be made one of our strengths.

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

Eliza Crunch — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Sea Shepherd is a real life band of pirates. They are guardians of the ocean, shepherding marine mammals, keeping them safe from illegal whaling and over fishing. Japan kills hundreds of whales per year in the name of research and also results in selling the leftovers and making bank. Whale meat is a cash crop in Japan. However, The Steve Irwin Foundation and many research facilities in California have dedicated their time and efforts to develop non-lethal or even non-harmful ways of gathering the same data. The ways are developed and being finely tuned everyday. The cash crop ‘research’ that Japan engages in could be done without the bloodbath. Cpt. Watson of the Sea Shepherd has developed non-lethal pirate techniques to stopping the slaughter. Greenpeace just stands aside and whines, “Please let them go.” But Sea Shepherd has acknowledged that petitions haven’t made them stop, and has taken the stand (as the only organization doing this) to put themselves physically between the Japanese boats and the whales. Conservation means protecting and preserving what little is left. Right now in Antarctica the boat, The Steve Irwin, is patrolling the area with a helicopter and a gas powered little inflatable boat I like to call Speedy. There are multiple cameras being used at all times because documentation is everything. Catching every action made internationally protects the Sea Shepherd and is evidence against Japan. From Speedy, crew members throw stink bombs on whaling boats which A) make the boat smell offensive to possible oncoming whales and B) make the boat smell so offensive that the crew gets nauseous and have to turn around ASAP. From Speedy, they can also deliver official international notices of violating ocean laws. For example, certain areas in the Antarctic oceans are protected as breeding grounds for species like humpbacks whales, going there for the purpose of slaughter is against the law!!!! SSCS also protects seals in Canada from being clubbed. They were the first to get film footage of the massive bloodbath dolphin slaughter in Taiji, Japan. This footage got on international news so the world could see the reality that occurs every year. And what about the sharks in South Africa? Or the habitats being destroyed in the Galapagos? The SSCS is about education and action but they need our help. The Sea Shepherd runs off of donations. Fall term, an individual recognized the need to help them and organized a pirate costume party fundraiser at the Campbell Club that raised $553. SSCS ACTUALLY save the Whales. Look forward to a follow up party Winter term. To stay up to date, watch Whale Wars on Animal Planet.

The Socialist Ideology

Robert Caswell — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

This world is plagued by fear. Fear of economic downturn. Fear of financial insecurity. Fear for the lack of control over the means of production. This is the fear that has inhabited the planet since the inception of the free market; as such, it is perpetuated by the fundamental structure of capitalism. The capitalist system breeds anxiety and self-loathing, and thus, all ideologies that adhere to this economic system innately oppress the masses. Every ideology, from the New Right to modern liberalism, endorses the corporate structure, save one: socialism. In a society where job security is guaranteed and economic hardships are shared across a population, suffering is significantly less present and poverty on the individual level is nonexistent, since the whole of society distributes the burden equally. Socialism is the only political theory that holds any merit, and its establishment is necessary to guarantee true freedom to all and give courage, hope, and a voice to the oppressed. Capitalism, especially the American version, is comprised of artificial entities that serve no purpose other than to generate a surplus of wealth and to propagate insecurity. Banks and conglomerates, minorities in the world, are nothing more than constructs that own a majority of the assets and control the means of production. Meanwhile the real majority, the working class does not actually own property, even in the Information Age; rather, they are allowed through contract to operate underneath capitalist oppression. The banks permit proletarian residents to live in property that is actually owned by the banks, so long as the workers continue to make monthly payments. All the while, the banks, which serve no real purpose, generate large amounts of capital to feed back into the same illusory system, and the working class remains in the same fearful state, worrying whether they will have a roof to live under next year. To make matters worse, markets are allowed to fluctuate violently over periods of time and force massive layoffs which spread more misery through the working classes. As long as the system is fairly stable, the government allows a certain amount of individual freedom, which is taken away the moment financial security is lost. This perpetuates fear and inequality, which causes suffering. Suffering would be limited in a socialist society where the means of production are owned and controlled by all. Whether through reformation or through revolution, a socialist world must be brought about to ensure equality. The abolishment of private ownership is necessary to end the cycle of human suffering, and its end will help to see the creation of a truly free society. When the means of production are owned collectively, self-interest decreases over time, and mutual prosperity ensues without the interference of affliction upon the masses. The selfish ego matters less and less during the evolution of a classless society. Goods and services are valued only by the need they fill in a community, and monetary value is abolished to be replaced with a system of need-based consumption in which all commodities are free to everyone. When items are free and readily available to all, theft and greed lose their appeal, and hoarding supplies to create a safety net is no longer necessary since all individuals are secure in all aspects of life. At current, the American system is not yet ready for the construction of a society based on collective ownership of all industries. The recent election of Barack Obama as President of the United States shows a slight movement towards the left for this country, but even President Obama endorses the free market without remorse. His support for nationalizing healthcare is only a movement towards a state operated social democracy, under which the proletariat is still oppressed by capitalist overlords. In fact, on the political spectrum, Obama lies entirely to the right of the median line, encouraging market competition instead of cooperation. His views are not only authoritarian, but they help to artificially substantiate the claim that capitalism could be reformed to eliminate class oppression. This idea has failed in the past in Northern Europe, as all Nordic economies have started a trend of slow decay, and the reformation of capitalism will fail in the United States if President-elect Obama intends to found it there. While detrimental to the working class now and further along if a social democracy is established, the Obama regime could further the spread of leftist ideals in the long run. In fact, he could prove entirely different than his Senate record suggests in terms of ideology. Also, although descriptions of a socialist Obama are at this point entirely false, his administration could allow Americans to observe what a social democracy is like, and if it’s a success, the political spectrum of the United States could shift as a whole towards socialism. However, this would be a slow transition for American politics and would allow for the bourgeois to maintain power while the suffering of the working class continues. Patience is the only path to tread in seeing what the Obama’s regime holds in store. On a world scale, socialism’s future is more hopeful. In particular, the Netherlands, famous for its ingenuity and forward thinking, has seen an increase in socialist movements. The Socialist Party of the Netherlands has had enormous success over the past fifteen years, currently comprising the third largest share of seats in the politically significant Lower House which directly reflects the democratic will of the people unlike the Upper House which is appointed by regional councils. As one of the forerunners for modern capitalism and the stock market, the Netherlands was among the first colonialist nations to build factories and transition to modern oppression; at that time, capitalism and imperialism were a step forward for human rights. Also, the country has always been known for its permissive attitude towards non-standard cultures and has been able to maintain this attitude in a world that isn’t so complacent. Thus, a self-sufficient agrarian economy is feasible for the tiny nation, and its embrace of modernity allows would allow it to progress intellectually and technologically. These two key features would allow the generation of capital and of required goods, and a society like this would be able to subsist while the rest of the world remains capitalist. This is why Holland is one of the more perfect breeding grounds for the first true tests of socialism. Other small democratic nations could follow suit, or perhaps could beat the Low Countries to the chase by claiming a majority of socialist citizens within their borders; a simple majority is all that stands in the way of establishing a socialist state in most countries. Other options exist, but are less favorable than democratic processes, since they require the suppression of dissenting ideas which are needed, even if they are primitive. Anyway the revolution is brought about, the ultimate goal of socialism is a single, unified, and globally socialist human civilization. This is brought about through the rationalization of individuals across the globe, and their inevitable rejection of capitalism. The spread of ideas is therefore the key factor in swaying minds to the cause. But why must capitalism be rejected? With reform and a post-ideological mindset, it could be possible to keep the free market, since rationality could justify this position. Post-modernism and the globalization of the “shrinking world” through the spread of capital, information, and ideas have brought about the simplified approach to politics that is the post-ideological belief structure. This position concentrates on skirting multiple viewpoints with a strong sense of incredulity, and its skepticism of simple methods of progression seems valid at first since it calls into question all foundations. The post-modern approach to ideology claims socialism, like every other belief, cannot be justified. It rejects the notion that there is only one legitimate political view, asserting that post-ideological non-partisanship is the most logical way to view politics. However, a post-modern globalized system is still oppressive to the majority of the world, and creates excess capital that is squandered on the business class bourgeois. Post-modernity, while striving for a valid philosophy through reason, overlooks the fact that the entire capitalist system is based on fear. Consequently, the exploited classes should refuse this and every other viewpoint as corrupt and tyrannical. They should embrace the globalization of socialism as the only valid ideology. The socialist view holds that the means of production must be collectively owned by all in order to ensure security for all. This principle is unyielding to a reformed free market or State capitalism, and it calls for the expedition of global revolution, primarily through the active spread of ideas. As stated by the Socialist Party of the Netherlands, “Silence is consent.” In order to throw off an oppressive capitalist government, the spread of ideas and the spread of one unified voice for socialism are mandatory. So stand up, gather your voice, and support the socialist ideology by inspiring action and thought.