anthropology by the wire

[softcatbaltimore]

From Wednesday April 29th:

Baltimore Uprising – what a beautiful phrase. I write this coming back almost an hour ago from one of the largest marches (possibly around 2,500 people) I’ve been to in the past two weeks. It was entirely student run. Saturday the 25th was the first day I was properly able to protest without taking off work, and proved to be one of the largest of the movement’s besides the one I mentioned previously. We started in Sandtown/ Winchester with only a few hundred people before waiting until 3pm when Freddie Gray’s family, and about another three hundred people, started joining with us from West Baltimore to City Hall. We marched peacefully gaining many more protestors in the streets, past Camden Yards for the first time. One of the main organizers at the front of the line waved a worn copy of The New Jim Crow, a book I had in my backpack. I pulled it out and waved it back at him. At City Hall, we heard from speakers including Freddie Gray’s (or Pepper as was his nickname) cousins, Malik Shabazz - a very controversial figure and president of Black Lawyers for Justice, and many others. Though most media coverage completely missed this part of the day and the speeches that were made, one of Gray’s cousin’s words rang out like the reverberations of a bell, “No one thought that a young black man from my neighborhood could lead a group of protestors this large through the streets of Baltimore peacefully to city hall. I proved them wrong. “ During the talks I saw things I will never forget. The Crips and Bloods, both men and women, sitting peacefully next to each other on the top of bus stops. Children with shirts that said “Stop Genocide.” A group of protestors forcefully lowering the American flag to half mass, and on the opposite side forcefully taking the American flag down completely and replacing it with a black and white version. Then we marched to Camden Yards.

This is where you might know the story. This is where the rest of the world started paying attention. Smashed windows, people getting in fights, damaged Cop cars. The thing is – I understand why everyone started paying attention. I understood that the media got exactly what they wanted – a destructive and apocalyptic portrayal of violence that gave them cause for the term “thug” to be thrown around. What people may not know is that night many of the incidents were actually started by drunken Orioles’ fans agitating fed up protestors (“outside agitators” as the news & city phrases it) whose emotions were already at an all time high. The Baltimore City Paper has documented the misrepresentation of Saturday night’s images extensively in this week’s issue. As things got heavy, I left the scene to go to my second job at The Crown only to be once again glued to social media. Scenes of the police presence and occupation in Sandtown at the Western District Police HQ reached a high point of the day, as videos and images of the “chaos” downtown reached social media, and word that Orioles fans were being detained inside the stadium for “public safety” reasons. Most of the white people had left the protests as they moved West, but by the end of the night a certain City Paper staff photographer was one of the last standing and was beaten down (on video) by what appeared to be about ten fully armed police in riot gear. Mass circulation of out of context images of “rioters” starting fights and smashing windows pervaded headlines the next morning, twisted and coated with layers of subtle racist language and subtext.

Sunday was mostly calm. Baltimore needed to breathe. I went with a friend to a small demonstration held at the prison where we waited for the release of protesters who were locked up the night before. Organizers shouted on the megaphone to prisoners in their cellblocks telling them they are not forgotten, while giving speeches demanding the end to capitalism. This might have been the most meaningful moment of the movement to me.

Monday: I woke up for work, and by noon had already heard reports of the Crips and Blood’s vow to kill off police. Something sounded very off to me, mostly because I had heard this news on our local NPR station, which I ultimately do not trust. And here is what I very much want to emphasize – the timeline. The suspiciousness of it all comes way too close to a conspiracy theory, but when other people I talked to (including students I’ve talked with) corroborated my thoughts, I couldn’t help but feel that this whole thing was staged. And here’s how it goes from what I’ve gathered from talking with students and hearing their voices:

1.Media announcement that Crips/Bloods/Black Guerilla Family vow to kill off police. Gangs later confirmed they never made that statement 2. Rumors circulate about a “purge” started on social media, but cannot be accurately traced back to a source. 3. City buses, subways and all reliable transportation are shut down or rerouted from West Baltimore neighborhoods. 4. Most students not notified by the school systems of any disruptions of transportation, except for by family or social media. Principals and city officials gave no word to students about shutdowns. 5. School gets out and students are left to find their own ways of getting back home. On some accounts, police forcefully required bus drivers to stop and unload what students they did have on the bus. 6. Students are faced with hundreds of police in riot gear waiting for them to make a move, still with no alternative ways of getting home. 7. Taunted by police, a few angry students, with decades of built up anger and hopelessness pervading every aspect of their lives, decide to throw a few rocks. Police throw rocks back. 8. Things escalate from 1 to 10 and immediately the images of burning Cop cars and looters are played on every major media network on loop for the rest of the night. 9. Baltimore is placed under a strict citywide curfew for the following week, and students are called “thugs” once again by the Mayor. 10. The immense respect paid for Freddie Gray’s funeral that same day is quickly forgotten.

Much like everyone else I knew, we were all glued to our social media outlets in some Baudrillard-esqe spectacle. I could feel everyone’s hearts collectively stabbed in Baltimore. Not only did the major news networks completely destroy any credibility the past week and a half of peaceful protests, but also all sorts of racist trolls came out of the woodwork. I was busy tweeting up a storm, retweeting as many other voices on the streets as I could, yelling at the BCPD online, and letting friends on FB from far away know what was actually going on.

Around 11pm, one of my friends from the band Romantic States expressed a desire to start a clean up effort for the following morning. I messaged her, and within a few hours we had a facebook event up detailing our mission to use the event as a place for people to come together to post about what neighborhoods needed help cleaning up. The event went “viral” I suppose, and within the following hours gained 2k attendees by the time I went to bed at 1:30am. I was put in contact with Sandtown community organizers No Boundaries Coalition, who wanted to join forces and meet up in one central location on Penn & North that would become the hub for volunteers, which I felt honored and humbled to do. The next morning at 9am we went straight to work as hundreds of volunteers looked to us for guidance. Community and faith leaders in the Sandtown/ Winchester neighborhood led the effort and I helped to direct volunteers to the areas that needed most help. By noon, the entire neighborhood was spotless, due mostly to the fact that residents took to the street cleaning action around 5am and did the majority of the work. With more protests looming in the afternoon, we quickly realized that we needed to leave the neighborhood at the request of the community.

The rest of the day was a surreal afterglow effect, a bright sunny day in the aftermath of a turbulent storm. I went to a few community-organized events, including a student-led discussion that turned into more of a group therapy session between people of all different backgrounds in my old neighborhood of Remington. There were a few protests and demonstrations being held around the Penn & North intersection, which I did not support due to community leaders whom I’d talked to earlier expressing a desire for people to no longer occupy their neighborhood. However, the protests seemed largely positive and peaceful and full of a celebratory nature, with videos circulating of residents in rollerblades parading around in the afternoon sun. In the Station North neighborhood, right outside of The Crown, local musician TT the Artist hosted an impromptu dance-off among many of her devout followers. Many people gathered around the abandoned lot where she brought her own sound system and DJs. The dancers were unbelievable and ultimately extremely welcoming as people from the neighborhood came up and started dancing and showing off their footwork with a growing crowd of on-lookers. It was apparent they just wanted to start something positive, and that’s exactly what they did. I saw an old man with a cane walk away from that dance party trying to pull off some of his own moves, throwing a few spins and an attempt at some footwork. It seemed like the whole city was dancing.

And then the first night of the 10pm city wide curfew started. Protestors still lingering at the Penn & North intersection were maced and forced into a martial law of compliance. The next day (Wednesday the 29th) saw protests in New York and DC, along side the largest protest of the movement in Baltimore, which was once again all student led.

[magicalmusicalbreakuphospit-blog]

This man, Conor Fowler of Baltimore, MD, is a rapist. He raped me and has raped other women I know. He is violent, manipulative, dangerous, and should not be trusted. He is not under any current legal investigation and is still a threat to women in the Baltimore area.

Stay away from him and advise everyone you know to do the same. I suspect he has attacked many women and will continue to do so any time he feels he can get away with it.

It has taken me nearly six years to build up the courage to share this in such a public way and I am doing so in hopes of reaching out to other women he victimized who have not yet had the support or avenues needed to come forward.  I want to do everything in my power to stop him from hurting anyone else, but I can’t do this alone.  Please share via any/all social media platforms and feel free to add commentary.

If you know someone Conor assaulted who wants to talk me, give her my contact information or request it through my ask box if you don’t know me in person.  You are not alone.

[bubble-lead]

Please reblog and spread this.

He has hurt numerous friends of mine and we refuse to let him hurt anyone else.

[meredithplayground]

[mparknsf]

i'm packed and ready to leave tonight to drive to Ontario for a wedding. I've been watching 30 Rock to pass the time while outside a storm rolls over Towson. This morning we had a group exit interview with Dr. Angela Howell, a professor from Morgan State. I didn't speak much, instead taking the time to think over every question she asked and the responses my cohorts gave.

Since my group effectively finished up our deliverables days ago (seriously, my ladies all worked so hard, CLAPS) this week has been a bit of a waiting game of finishing up a few details here and there and preparing to leave. I'm not sure if i've really considered the weight of leaving this project yet. It's passed by so quickly, I still don't fully understand that when I leave tonight I'm not coming back.

The intensity and immersion in our work experiences, the forced closeness of our cohort, and the new environment to call home - it's all been a bit of a fever dream, a serious break from reality. And yet the work we've done is real work, and the experiences we've had have been formative, and will probably continue to shape our ways of thinking.

If I don't get a chance to say goodbye to all of you who I worked with - well, best of luck in whatever you go home to tomorrow, and thank you for being the most valuable part in this experience. Working with each of you has been a lot of fun at most times, difficult at some, and always interesting. If you're sticking around Baltimore, who knows..maybe i'll see you again.

:)

[slouchingtowardsbmore]

I’ve been meaning to publish this for a while but I’m just getting around to it now, so apologies for the lateness/obsolescence. 

The view from my testing station at City Uprising. Rather than just provide privacy, the partitions at Unity UMC served as a history lesson and introduction for those getting tested to Unity UMC. On the outer wall facing the rest of the church were hand-drawn pictures and messages from children with sayings such as “We love you,” “God is love,” and the like. It may not have been the explicit intention of Unity UMC’s congregation, but what once was merely an HIV testing event became a PR event for the parish with the addition of these decorations.

Unity UMC was certainly good at advertising itself, but how effective was it in advertising free HIV testing and linkage to care for people who are positive? How much good, or ill, can a religious institution do when it comes to conversations about HIV? Anyone can imagine the moral and philosophical hang-ups that come with HIV prevention and faith-based communities. Those assumptions about “correct” behavior play a factor in the willingness of people to talk frankly about their sex lives in a church, of all places.

But Dr. Durington raised an interesting point. We were chatting during City Uprising about HIV in general, and he was pushing the idea that most HIV infections come from IV drug use rather than unprotected sex. I never considered that possibility because I’ve let myself be blinded by the data - the data says most people are contracting HIV through sex, and that IV transmission has been in decline for a while. I collected my own qualitative surveys of 50 or so patients at the JACQUES Initiative when I interned there that said the same thing. The majority of patients at JACQUES are either struggling with or recovering from drug addiction, but I had good reason to infer (i.e., they indicated as much on the surveys) that they had been infected through unprotected sex while using. I guess I wanted to believe that because of my own personal bias: I collected that information, so I would know it best, right? Not really. It seems obvious to me now, but before Dr. Durington brought it up I generally dismissed the idea that the epidemiological profiles for HIV in Baltimore are skewed. But of course they are; they rely heavily on self-reporting for their data collection. As did I during my research. As do HIV testers every time we perform prevention counseling. If life, and anthropology, have taught me anything, it’s that people lie all the time, and often for good reasons. 

I mentioned a few weeks ago during our City Uprising debrief that HIV testing events in areas of high infection like Baltimore City are meant to weed out the people who are positive. But, anecdotally speaking, we tend to get a lot of people who’ve had multiple tests over the years and generally stay on top of their respective HIV statuses (the biopower is strong with these ones). So where are the positives? We know they’re out there, but they don’t come to testing events. Based on the HIV infection statistics of the area, I’m sure every volunteer at Unity UMC encountered someone who was HIV positive but out of care. And it’s not as if they’re unaware of their statuses - I’d say people either know or have a very strong suspicion that they’re positive because of all the opportunities for mandatory HIV testing, especially in impoverished, “high-risk” communities. So why opt out of testing events, of treatment, of wellness?

I think there are HIV positive people who don’t come forward because of sexualized stigma associated with the disease. But now I’m wondering how many people don’t come forward because they’re entangled in cycles of drug abuse, and choose the drugs over HIV. JACQUES patients have said over and over again to me that they had to choose between HIV treatment and drugs, because it’s impossible to have both. Some of them chose the drugs a number of times before being linked to long-term HIV care. That was a choice they had to decide for themselves, and each person with HIV who struggles with addiction has to do the same. I can’t help but link the possibility of high, unreported rates of HIV infection among IV drug users to the War on Drugs, its attendant punitive responses to drug use, and its negative influence on harm reduction programs in the U.S.

Generally speaking, the War on Drugs has forced Americans to pretend that drug use is a black-and-white issue with easy solutions. It’s forced governmental agencies and NGOs to operate under zero-tolerance policies, which have the potential to undo all the significant work done in harm reduction in the late 20th century. The criminalization of drug use and the illicit economies that surround them force their members into the margins for fear of imprisonment as well as other legal and financial consequences.  So it seems like common sense that IV drug use would be a big reason why people don’t show up to HIV testing events - not necessarily because of the churches or the stigma, but because of a deeper and more intractable commitment to addiction. What’s troubling to me, as someone who wants people with HIV to be linked to care and recover from drug abuse, is that, if true, that would mean there are a significant number of people living in Baltimore who are being left out of outreach strategies. And that we let ourselves leave people out because of the controversial politics of drug treatment, harm reduction, and the War on Drugs. To be clear, I did realize during my research that drug addiction was a significant factor in HIV treatment, and that illicit economies like the drug trade play a factor in incidence and prevalence rates. But I hadn’t seriously considered just how much the realities of drug addiction, the unreliability of self-reporting, and the complexities of treating addiction may be skewing the picture we paint of what HIV looks like in Baltimore. This is so cheesy, but this made me think of a scene from The Wire, when Marlo Stanfield and a convenience story security guard engage in a symbolic battle for turf in the form of Dum-Dum lollipops. The security guard gets frustrated with Stanfield for not playing by the rules, and forcing him to risk his safety to enforce petty shoplifting laws against a renowned and dangerous drug kingpin. Stanfield, a true wordsmith, simply says, “You want it to be one way… But it’s the other way,” and drives away. What Marlo meant was that the security guard was clinging to a set of rules and behaviors that were simply untenable in that world of urban Baltimore. The idealized rule of law didn’t and couldn’t apply to a social order where informal, illicit, and violent ways of life were the only means of survival. This space operates according to its own rules, and those who try to enforce the “one way” will find that the “other way” always wins. Those of us academics, professionals, volunteers, and general well-wishers for the future of Baltimore want it to be one way. We swoop in with our health fairs, condoms, and hot dogs, and try to enforce one way that involves churches and universities and hospitals. We march into Baltimore with clipboards to narrate the one way that people get infected with HIV. We ignore the other way for a variety of reasons (some good and some bad) and eventually find ourselves in a quandary in which our efforts aren’t making the difference we thought they would. I don’t mean to accuse anyone of white savior complexes here, but am I the only person who thinks the entire NGO/humanitarian aid culture can at times be a little, uh, patronizing? And that it engage in problematic activities, even with the best of intentions?

[ewhittingtonnsf]

Addiction is an illness. Of course I understand the reason drugs are illegal. I understand why we have laws against heroin and crack. But the stigma attached to this illness-and to mental health-is unbearable. I have seen my family members suffer for years because society refuses to regard addiction as an illness and punishes and then half heatedly rehabilitates.

[patgavin]

[mparknsf]

patgavin:

Baltimore Bike Party June 2014.

[mparknsf]

Yesterday at City Uprising, I was tasked with canvassing the neighborhood. Along with two other ABTW participants, I followed Curtis (a colleague from the JACQUES Initiative) on a fascinating tour. We walked along blocks and blocks of abandoned or collapsing houses. Often it was hard to tell if a house was actually lived in or not. The sun beat down relentlessly, as there was hardly a tree or telephone pole in sight to use for shade. Walking through the cracked and potholed streets, we saw lots of murals, tags, and wall paintings, many with a political bent or to commemorate the passing of a loved one. Perhaps the strangest and most interesting part of our walk involved a detour into the oldest established stables in Baltimore city. From the street, one wouldn't even be able to tell there's a stable, if not for the smell of horses. Stepping past a large chain link fence into the yard of what once must have been a garage or autobody shop, we met several men sitting under a tent playing solitaire. Though I couldn't get names or photos for any of them, they were friendly enough to give us a brief history of the stables and let us walk around photographing the murals and horses. I spent part of my childhood in Kentucky - horse country and stable culture was the norm. Needless to say, this was unlike any stable I've ever set foot in. I don't know when I'll be back this way, and so I tried to get as many pictures as I could. With the surreality of the scene before me, I tried to absorb as much of the smells and sights as I could. We kept walking. Our unusual coterie (ie, being three white girls in Upton) got several strange looks as we walked and one man even stopped his car to roll down the window and ask what we were doing there. Curtis told me afterwards that, for the most part, white kids only come to that part of town to buy drugs, and since that wasn't our mission, it was puzzling and occasion for residents of the neighborhood to stare. Overall, the day was a sensory overload that blurred into a haze of heat and noise. Today, as I sit in an air conditioned coffee shop, looking out onto a colourful, bustling street with trees and flowers planted along, I puzzle at the fact that I'm in the same city as I was yesterday. It felt like I was on another planet in multiple aspects - the architecture, the people, even the evidence of the socioeconomic climate. I suppose all I can do today is think, process, and write, and maybe I'll piece a little bit of it together.

[meredithplayground]

Bike party was a ball.

[mparknsf]

last night! 

[ewhittingtonnsf]

Shooting our formal interviews today. The youth producers are able to confidentially share their experiences with WAYM and their hopes for the future. Even if they don’t plan to make a career out of their skills learned here, they have many benefits that will support them in whatever they do

[mparknsf]

This was my night. Wish you were there!

[mparknsf]

this past week has been incredibly immersive, and tiring, in following Wide Angle around and incorporating ourselves into their work. While we've collected plenty of footage, and with the formal interviews scheduled for tomorrow, I get the feeling it's not going to be enough for the people in charge. I'll admit, I'm under the weather today and feeling discouraged, but I'm just not sure how it'll be possible to complete every task we've been assigned, not only for this program, but for Wide Angle. Hopefully by Friday, we'll have enough input from Wide Angle to form a cohesive story for our documentary. I'm super thankful for the teammates I've got, who work so hard and take such good notes. Also, the fact that we can vent frustrations to one another, let off steam, but still come together to plan effectively is very encouraging. I know the next couple weeks will probably be brutal, but so long as we remain communicative with each other, Wide, Angle, and our professors, I think we have a shot at coming up with a pretty decent final product.

[mparknsf]

I've spent every night this weekend down in Station North, going to shows or seeing friends. It's nice to live so much closer and be able to ride a bus right into town. Living one city over year-round, with no car, makes it hard to get to the city as much as I'd like to. We're studying the deindustrialized city, the city affected by AIDS, the city as seen through the eyes of kids with cameras and families in historic neighbourhoods. This weekend however, I spent time in the Baltimore I'm more familiar with - the one that crowds 30 kids into a cramped basement, sweating along to some random touring band's music, the loud one in the bar that sprays beer over the crowd and takes a stage dive. It felt a little like a homecoming, after all this theory and studying and preproduction work. I guess all I'm trying to say is I'm seeing more and more sides of Baltimore than I have before, and what's more is I'm seeing how they're all connected in different intangible ways. This city is a weird, amazing place.

[theonion]

Anthropologists Classify 43 New Species Of Weirdo Within Subway Ecosystem

[mparknsf]

relevant

[oharriesnsf-blog]

[mparknsf]

my roommate took this photo. it moved me profoundly

[slouchingtowardsbmore]

I know I’m supposed to find a piece of archival media as part of pre-production for my video project with Olivia, but I’ll risk losing extra points to post this as our second piece.  This is the Baltimore edition of Judgmental Maps, a minor internet phenomenon in which an increasing number of American cities are mapped out according to local stereotypes and inside jokes. Judgmental Maps adds an additional layer to the topography of a city - a layer that is contested, problematic, and oddly enough, praised by natives, in a sort of “lovable screwup of a city” sort of way.

When the above Judgmental Map of Baltimore made the social media rounds a few months ago, many of my friends on Facebook posted it with additional commentary of their own. Most reactions weren’t outraged, but posted with the smugness only someone who “gets” the jokes can convey. The dissemination of Judgmental Maps across and within cities all over the U.S. is driven in a lot of ways by a need to feel belonging in spaces that are unfathomably vast, diverse, and foreign. That’s understandable, as we all feel a sense of inclusion when we’re complaining about or making fun of the same thing together. 

More than a symbol of camaraderie, the Baltimore Judgmental Map can be seen as an archive for the distant and not-so-distant future. Because the dynamics of urban spaces change at such a breakneck pace, this map is probably already outdated. I have no doubt that it will become even more so in the next year, five years, and so on.  However, the part that most interests me and most relates to Olivia’s and my project is the subversion-via-incorporation of common tropes and archetypes of Baltimore city. I see a lot of “The Wires” over in West and South Baltimore, and while I can appreciate the reference, I can recognize that it, as well as the majority of labels on this map, is delivered in an in-your-face, tongue-in-cheek sort of way that dares you to believe it. The city of Baltimore, like every city, is much more complex than a few dozen problematic labels, and I can’t think of a more powerful way to demonstrate that than through parody. Olivia and I want to challenge the assumptions parodied in this map in the same way Anthropology by the Wire has been for the past three years. We want to address the same problematic stereotypes that permeate this piece of media, but without this level of irreverence.

[slouchingtowardsbmore]

Here some video from Anthropology by the Wire’s audiovisual production training week at Wide Angle Youth Media. Today, we learned about lighting techniques as well as the different messages various styles of lighting convey.

[mparknsf]

This was a fun exercise! My favourite part of today was when we put Ben in the spotlight and cast him as villainous, by playing around with light height and coloured gels.

[mparknsf]

» Wide Angle Youth Media

Here's a great article about the program, its purpose, and the people involved.