When we launched Youngist in the spring of 2013, we were responding to a powerful need that we saw in our informal networks. Something big was happening, but it wasn’t being covered in ways that were immediate, honest, and present. We wanted to cover “the bold and innovative efforts of an entire generation to shift cultural and political-economic paradigms” in a way that most other publications — even those who might sympathize with young organizers and media-makers — were not.
Our initial editorial staff met through student organizing, primarily through the 2012 National Student Power Convergence, which itself was the result of formalizing networks of young people working against racism, labor exploitation, and neoliberalism in higher education in the United States and Canada. Importantly, many of us met in hallways outside of centralized organizing conversations, frustrated by white, male-dominated, and generally unintentional spaces. We became comrades in moments of personal crisis and would text one another in the middle of the night sending love.
Before coming together as Youngist, some of us met in the streets 2012 Quebec student strike, or when we were working on radical student newspaper staffs, or were trying to build student power unions in our states. What we had in common was a strong indignation towards how outside forces were speaking about us, without us. After months of planning and Skype calls between Los Angeles, New York, Atlanta, Toronto, Buffalo, and Montreal, we launched our project on a sharp, clean Tumblr designed by Tom Acker. It was Mother’s Day and the first story we ever published was about Ngoc Loan Tran’s relationship with their mom. A year later—through the tireless work of Maya Richman, a young Montreal-based developer who taught herself how to build a site like this as she went—we launched our official site.
For two and a half years, our meetings (which were conducted remotely over Google Hangouts) happened between restaurant shifts and classes, across time zones, in the midst of family crises, breakups, full-time jobs, and full course loads. At the end of the day, we feel these connections and experiences were invaluable because together we sought to undermine the very existence of borders, and built something together that represented our political affect even if it was itself, not necessarily a political program. Still, we were devoted to intervening and standing up against injustice wherever we saw it, from our own particular vantage point.
Uncompromisingly, we ensured that none of our writers were older than 26. Elders warned we would run up against myriad issues related to turnover and focus. Like youth struggle throughout history, we faced questions of how to keep up our energy, how to build a staff, how to balance our workloads, and where to turn when we weren’t sure how to address novel challenges. Because of these challenges, many of the skills we honed at Youngist were skills we had to learn by doing.
We recognize that a lot of the work we do as organizers, and youth organizers in particular, is transient. Many of us now feel the harsh post-teen fatigue, struggle with depression under a white supremacist, transphobic, capitalist system…but transience is not for naught! We know we meant something to at least a portion of the people we wrote for: the young, dispossessed and visionary.
Ultimately, Youngist was sustained on the work of young people who were immersed in struggle themselves, had no previous experience running a large-scale publishing project, but came from a truly DIY ethos: no dads, no masters, no ad revenue. We launched two very successful crowdfunding campaigns, which kept the site afloat, paid our writers more than many big media conglomerates, and allowed us to prioritize the voices we still believe are left in the dust in both social movement and millennial narratives.
This model made it possible to write frankly about our visions for a world without police and prisons, give some much needed advice about surviving graduation, offer alternatives to carceral feminism, level with ourselves about how the revolution is kinda boring, and so much more. (You can read it all on the site, which will remain up for as long as we can swing it.)
Of course, this was not without its struggles. We ran up against burnout, being under-resourced, feeling confused and angry about our lack of ability to grow in the ways we originally envisioned. As the project expanded, we discovered we needed to temper our ambition with realism about our capacity, and the challenges of working horizontally with remote collaborators.
We were mentored by a group of journalists, creatives and writers who exemplify the spirit of the project: independent, critical, and connected to their communities, and to whom we’re immensely grateful: Aura Bogado, Michelle Chen, Caroline Heldman, Angus Johnston, Victoria Mahoney, Sahar Massachi, Janet Mock, Nayantara Sen, and Peter Rothberg. Their belief that marginalized youth can, and should, speak for themselves, on their own platform, was inspiring and sustaining.
Through our struggle and success, we’ve learned, ultimately, that the work is hard — but it’s worth it. To young people now dreaming of building your own platforms, we want to offer words of encouragement, but also offer some useful lessons, so you don’t have to repeat our mistakes.
Find the people that share your values and make shit together.
If you plan to run a thing and not pay yourselves, you need to be extra intentional about who you are, how you will deal with the structural hindrances to different people’s involvement, including the way classism operates and how you plan to combat it.
If you want to pay yourselves and your writers, we don’t recommend relying on ad revenue. Consider relying on your readers because ad-blocking software is killing small publishing crowdfunding campaigns are a major energy-sucker, and grants are never really without strings.
Ask for advice and mentorship, but be uncompromising on your values.
Be responsive and accountable but do not buckle under punitive callout culture because it’s a trap. Know what you’re about and be about it.
Take risks. Make a hypothesis, test it out, fuck up, try something different.
Nourish the marginalized voices. Be willing to meet people where they are, but also lovingly challenge one another because we live under fucked up conditions that don’t give us the tools for our own liberation.
As we sunset Youngist as an active project, we wanted to take a moment to remember the work — and why we started this thing in the first place. We still believe there’s a critical need for young people to have their own spaces to tell their own stories, and if you’ve got that fire in your belly and want to know more about how we did it together, we’re always happy to talk.
We thank all of our readers, advisors, contributors, and everybody who donated resources and money to make Youngist possible.
After months of conceptualizing, designing, planning, and programming, {Young}ist is proud to unveil our new website! A sleeker design and streamlined tags system makes the site – and all of our great content – easier to navigate. And we're excited to be moving our site off of a Tumblr platform! All in all, the new youngist.org, which was built entirely on the open-source space called Github, is a new phase in our development to be more accessible, bigger, and better. We hope you enjoy it and keep coming back.
What Happened in Albany? Interpreting the Massive Parent Turnout in Support of Charter Schools
by George Joseph
March 4th in Albany felt like a massive field trip gone wrong. On the same day that New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio rallied over a thousand students, parents, and labor activists to the capital in support of his signature campaign promise - universal pre-school - about seven thousand school kids, parents, and teachers, bussed in by Success Academy charter school CEO Eva Moskowitz, marched in opposition protesting De Blasio’s decision to charge affluent charter schools rent for the spaces they collocate from public schools and for his administration’s decision to approve “only” five of Moskowitz’s eight proposed colocations for next school year.
Though some writers have stressed the rally’s use of students and parents as lobbying props, the reality apparent to those present was much more complicated. Many students and parents seemed excited to be there, chanting, carrying signs, and speaking out. Thus, for public school advocates, interested in building a truly grassroots movement to reinvigorate community schools, the hundreds of city parents who made the trip up to Albany, cannot simply be written off as victims of “false consciousness.” It is only by taking their actions and words seriously that we can understand these parents’ attitude towards charter schools, which undoubtedly represent the views of a significant percentage of the city’s working class parents. In fact, according to a recent Quinnipiac University poll, 40% of New Yorkers supported charter school expansion while only 11% favored a decrease in the number of charters schools.
Within the charter ranks at Albany, there was a clear ideological distinction between parents and the officials who had summoned them. According to Izzy Kopis, a Success Academy math curriculum director, the key to her school’s popularity is its union-free campus, “We’re independently run and free from a lot of union rules, so we have a lot of flexibility to choose our curriculum, our school hours, and our quality teachers.” Following the Waiting for Superman template, Kopis attributed her school’s popularity with parents to its ability to bypass teachers’ unions, neoliberalism’s boogeyman for every failure in the public education.
On the other hand, parents, who were willing to speak off the record, commended their kids’ charter schools, though for altogether different reasons. Their comments were not focused on charter schools’ ability to break off from union contracts or freedom to dip into some mystical source of market efficiency; instead, their praise was focused on the extra attention their children received, the smaller class sizes, the higher funding per pupil, the refurbished facilities, and the cutting-edge classroom technology - all needs which policy makers consistently exacerbate in public schools. As Brian Jones, a former teacher and public school advocate explained:
“Parents are doing what they’re supposed to do, fighting for what they think is best for their own kids and who can blame them? We’ve been fighting for these school quality issues for decades, yet today policy makers force parents with the Faustian bargain, ‘Oh, you want arts programing, classroom technology, smaller class sizes? Well then you have to go to charters.’”
Hence, it makes perfect sense that parents seek “choices” to help their kids escape schools with impossible learning environments. What public school advocates must make clear, then, is that the forces behind charter schools are not a response to “failing public schools,” but rather the very cause of them.
“During Bloomberg’s years, our schools faced constant cuts not only to funding but also to space from other public and charter schools,” said parent Miriam Aristy-Farer at the rally. “Our school in Washington Heights went from an A to C rating after getting two colocations we didn’t want. Of course when you gut public schools, people are going to look for alternatives.” Indeed, as Diane Ravitch and Leonie Haimson, founder of Class Size Matters, outline in The Nation, the Bloomberg era was devastating to school quality:
“the size of classes in the early grades are now the largest in fourteen years, and about half of middle and high school students are in classes of thirty or more. Many teachers have 150 students, making it all but impossible for them to look students ‘in the eye’ and give them the individual attention they need—especially students who are disadvantaged.”
It is no coincidence that charter advocates like former New York City Mayor Bloomberg, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel, and education secretary Arne Duncan have gone significant lengths to destroy the public school system, cynically promoting rapid charter expansion in the wake of massive school closings or natural disasters. As Jones noted, “Charters don’t have a market if public schools aren’t failing. If public schools can provide the same resources and funding, who’s going to wait for a lottery? Their whole model is to feed off the destruction of the public school system.”
Charter schools cannot be neutral. Their very existence is antithetical to the public school system. Charters cannot expand their market share without creating demand; their growth model directly depends on the liquidation of the public school system. Consequently, as Diane Ravitch explained in an email, parents’ demands for quality schools would be “better served by fighting to improve their neighborhood schools rather than promoting academic apartheid.”
Yet as supporters of public education, we must take the concerns of parents considering charter schools seriously, making a good faith effort to provide a positive alternative vision. The 2012 Chicago Teachers Union strike and last year’s community mobilization on the part of the Portland Association of Teachers prove that when the connections between inadequate public services and “education reform” are unabashedly articulated entire communities can band together in defense of their students, teachers, and schools. But as the confusing rally in Albany demonstrates, as long as parents remain divided, clashing over issues as basic as universal pre-K, the struggle to save our community schools will remain at a standstill.
Students of Color Continue to Target Napolitano, Demand Resignation
“We have been waiting for Napolitano to come… and finally she is here, but she is hiding, she remains in one building and does not leave…where she says she is doing her “listening and learning tour” behind doors with only a certain number of students, but you know this is bullshit because she is hiding and for what? What does she have to hide from us? We must ask ourselves this because if she is hiding she is not hiding alone… the regents are behind her… they are not innocent either… they continue to violate student rights like Napolitano continues to violate human rights because even if she is not the head of homeland security department anymore what she has done continues to impact our lives today and this is something we will not forget no matter how hard Napolitano and the regents try…” –S. R.
Nearly one month ago, on February 13th 2014, upwards of two hundred and fifty people congregated at Sproul Plaza to protest Janet Napolitano’s appointment as UC President. News of the last campus visit on her “listening and learning” tour brought us together to mobilize weeks in advance. Leading up to the day of her visit, we circulated a letter demanding her immediate resignation and the democratization of the UC President and UC Regents selection processes. A multitude of student and staff organizations endorsed the letter and committed to participate in the day of action.
There is a great deal of speculation and misinformation concerning the day of action organized by the Student of Color Solidarity Coalition. Although this is not the first action we have taken–our first action protesting Janet Napolitano’s appointment took place in the Fall semester, on the day of Chancellor Dirks’ inauguration, at which Napolitano spoke–we feel that it is necessary to bring clarity to the events of this day. We are taking this opportunity to connect to the local and the statewide UC community and beyond, to those who were watching closely, sending us their support from a distance. We are issuing this statement in order to share what happened during the day of action and the takeover of the Blum Center so we can reflect and formulate future strategies.
At the end of this post, we provide a link to personal statements written by participants from the day of action. Since each person experienced the day of action differently, we believe that these narratives are absolutely essential to understanding that day.
The action kicked off with the rally in Sproul Plaza, facilitated by student organizers from the SCSC and was attended by hundreds of students from different communities. On the speakers’ list were Roberto Lovato from Presente.org, the Bay Area historian Gray Brechin, and youth from 67Sueños that performed a song about deportations and violence at the border. Not long after the speakers’ list closed, students began to march to Sutardja Hall. When the march reached Memorial Glade, UAW grad students spoke and led chants outside of Doe Library. Shortly after, the march continued on to the building in which Napolitano was meeting with twenty students behind closed doors. As we reached the area we gathered outside of the Blum center, where students had just successfully executed a building take-over and reclaimed the space outside as our own, making speeches, talking about next steps, and most importantly waiting for those in the meeting to walkout.
Why Students Walked Out
On the last stop on her “listening and learning tour”, Napolitano chose to meet with only twenty undergraduate students in a small conference room on the 6th floor of Sutardja Dai Hall. Fifteen of those students decided to make Napolitano listen to them, organizing a plan to subvert her tour. Napolitano’s office required the list of students that she would meet with weeks in advance. Leading up to the meeting, however, Napolitano changed her schedule multiple times. Moreover, students were lied to about who would be checking ID’s at the door–they didn’t realize it would be so highly policed. It was clear that Napolitano was prepared to meet resistance.
Within the meeting, students spoke from lived experiences, forcing Napolitano to sit, witness, and endure their truths, not giving her an opportunity to justify her actions. Students took turns reading their personal statements to her: student narratives of being undocumented, Muslim, queer, sexual violence survivors, low income, first generation college students. They explicated why her presence on campus is a threat to their communities and an insult to the entire student population. After everyone around the table spoke their piece, they walked out to drive home the message that we are not interested in engaging in conversation with an individual who has caused so much pain to our communities, we were not there to negotiate or work with a human rights violator nor with any of the individuals who impel the privatization and militarization of our campuses. We are fighting to reclaim our university and we want them out.
The Take-Over
The Blum Center take-over on February 13th marked the first successful building reclamation on the UC Berkeley campus since the struggles against the fee hikes of 2009 and 2010. Janet Napolitano spent her entire visit at the private labs of Sutardja Dai Hall–so why didn’t we take over that building instead? In order to gain strategic advantage, we felt that attempting to take the massive and highly securitized Sutardja Dai would be futile and thus should be avoided. Instead, we chose to exert social power by reclaiming a more strategic building. We chose the Blum Center because of its symbolic significance: it embodies corporate interests and forces of global imperialism (“The Center for Developing Economies”, seriously?) and it was funded by the UC Regent Richard Blum, one of the main profiteers of the UCs investments on construction projects. Blum was a key player in the selection of Janet Napolitano as candidate for UC President, and in her eventual appointment.
Why We Chose the Blum Center
Opened in April of 2009, the Blum Center For Developing Economies was made possible by the $15 million donation of the San Francisco based financier Richard Blum. No regent, or private businessman has ever before had private offices on UC campuses. His private equity firm, the $7 billion Blum Capital Partners, owns the largest real estate firm in the world, BC Richard Ellis, of which Blum is chairman of the board. He is also a major shareholder of one of the largest for profit education companies, Career Education Corporation. There is very strong evidence indicating that he owns border-town maquiladoras that build weapons components for the US military.
Blum is one of a number of UC Regents who specialize in leveraged buyouts and privatization of publicly traded companies. They have long practiced this same basic business philosophy on the university. The Regents have effectively pledged student fee increases to the capital bond market, thereby creating a financial incentive for the Regents to continue raising fees, in a scheme that raises money for campus construction projects and contributes to the profitability of for-profit education companies. URS Corporation–a company that Blum partially owns and that made $1.5 billion on contracts awarded by Feinstein’s Senate military construction committee–has been the main contractor for the largest university capital projects in recent years: UCLA’s $150 million reconstruction of Santa Monica Hospital, UC Berkeley’s $48 million nanotechnology laboratory, and Berkeley’s $200 million Southeast Campus Integrated Project, which includes a seismic retrofit of Memorial Stadium and an expansion of the Haas School of Business — the building that was originally slated to house the Blum Center for Developing Economies.
It must be emphasized that Richard Blum was the driving force in choosing Janet Napolitano as the new UC president. In fact, Blum and a very small number of Regents, including Monica Lozano, a board member of Bank of America, and Russell Gould, the former vice-chairman of the 2008 crisis connected Wachovia Bank, are those responsible for the central decisions of the University. These associates–or cronies–of Blum have the most to gain from the gradual death of public education, since their banks will continue to lend to the UC and their construction companies will continue to get priority bids for new projects. Who better to facilitate the continuation of this process than someone who spent the last few years heading one of the largest institutions of social control in the country?
Why We Chose to Leave
We held the Blum Center for 25 hours–the longest building take-over in decades. How could we just get up and leave? What would make staying worth it? What would make leaving worth it? We never expected to stay so long. We were prepared to be arrested by the police within a mere few hours.
Still, making the choice to leave was not easy. Throughout the time the Blum 11 spent inside of the building, the ASUC President and the Dean of Students tried convincing us to leave the building. Our choices were not influenced by promises of amnesty, although organizers did demand amnesty for all participants in the direct action. Each decision we made was informed by care for each other and a consciousness of our group’s capacity both inside and outside the building. We knew that what we were doing needed to be seen within a long term strategy, and that at this moment our demands needed to be clear and widely circulated. We also came to recognize the limits of our capacity. After dusk, the police made dispersal orders on a speaker every hour, notifying protesters that they were trespassing. All night, police in riot gear were shining lights into the Blum center from the next building, making their presence seem bigger than it actually was and causing panic among protesters. Those on the outside were forced to stay vigilant due to police activity and to their commitment to put their bodies on the line to protect those of us inside. On top of that, it rained all night long. Enduring 25 hours of uncertainty, of endless panic, was emotionally and physically exhausting to people both on the inside and the outside–especially on the outside, where the care work was carried out.
Although there were disagreements on how much longer we should hold the building, after intense deliberation we decided as a group that the best next step was to exit the building on February 14th at 5:00pm. Coming to a consensus doesn’t mean that everyone feels the same way–it means that everyone listens to each other and compromises according to the group’s needs. So what had we accomplished? Indeed, we sent a powerful message: we are here, we are growing and we are pushing the limits of what resistance on university campuses looks like. We hope that we set an example of what it will take to change the UC. Holding space was necessary to gain visibility for our movement and prolong our resistance, but it was also strategic in that we were able to critically engage with students and community members who previously had no knowledge of Napolitano’s despicable record, nor of the collusion of the UC regents with private interests.
What We Learned From Our Experience
We learned a great deal from our mistakes, as well as from our accomplishments. One rookie journalist attributed the organization of the action to the ASUC, completely erasing the extensive energy and dedication the SCSC put into planning and executing this action as a student of color led coalition not associated with the university. We received criticisms that we were in the wrong building, as if our intent was to chase down Napolitano and engage her. We have stated that we refuse to negotiate with her. It was on our terms, not Napolitano’s, that the UC administration would be forced to hear us. Students from the SCSC infiltrated the meeting with Napolitano and walked out in a swift, symbolic move to show that we were not interested in speaking with her–speaking with Janet Napolitano on her terms would only legitimize her position. It was unnecessary to be in the same building as Napolitano, to make an attempt to resist under such controlled conditions. The real student power and democracy manifested outside, not behind closed doors in an exclusive meeting.
There were certainly moments when unexpected problems arose. Our responses to them brought to us many lessons that made our experience richer. Now we are creating ways to strategically move forward, adjusting our strategies to focus on how best to achieve the structural changes necessary, in ways that will allow student, faculty, staff and community participation in the decision-making processes of the Public University. As our numbers continue to increase, we know that we have to us the potential of student power to build a base and be able to accomplish what it will take to make that happen.
Ultimately, we realize that there was nothing the university could have done to make us fail. We have succeeded. We accomplished more than we expected. We set a new standard for direct action. From here, things will only escalate until our demands are met.
The Aftermath
The SCSC continues to organize against Napolitano and unveil this so-called “public” and “progressive” education system’s inner workings. We are now in a period of coalition building in order to sustain the momentum created on the day of action. This requires a great deal of collective self care so that we don’t burn out. The UC Berkeley organizing community is not alone in this fight against Napolitano and the Regents. All across the state, even the nation, people are beginning to see what steps will be necessary to make the university safe and accessible for all communities. We know that the fight will be difficult, but it is not impossible. It’s a matter of holding steadfast to our principles, and continuing to challenge the increasing injustices being done in our educational system.
This post was originally published by The Student of Color Solidarity Coalition on February 11th, 2014
Stand Your Ground laws found "incompatible" with the "inherent right to life" by United Nations Human Rights Committee
by Sandra Khalifa
Geneva, Switzerland -- Yesterday, multiple members of the United Nations Human Rights Committee (UN HRC) found Florida's Stand Your Ground law and similar laws around the country to be "incompatible" with the "inherent right to life" - Article Six of the International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights (ICCPR). ICCPR is an international human rights treaty that the U.S. ratified in 1992. Long considered customary international law, the treaty includes protections such as the right to life, freedom from discrimination, freedom of speech, and many other civil and political rights.
"The UN human rights committee members expressed the compassion and concern that has been missing from leadership in the state of Florida, and the United States, related to Stand Your Ground and its catastrophic effects," said Legal & Policy Director Ahmad Abuznaid. "While our Federal government maintains that this is a state issue, we reject that assertion. The DOJ admitted that these laws 'sow dangerous conflict in our neighborhoods' - if so, the DOJ needs to show leadership in encouraging states to reverse these laws, ensuring respect for the right to life."
"The UN Human Rights Committee members clearly see how Stand Your Ground laws not only call into question whether the US is adequately protecting its citizens' right to life, but also how these laws confuse juries and can lead to unjust results," said Meena Jagannath, attorney from the Community Justice Project of Florida Legal Services, who has been working with the Dream Defenders on this issue.
The issue of Stand Your Ground laws was among the few, if not the only issue raised by three different UN HRC members, all questioning the law's compatibility with international human rights principles. The U.S. delegation, present to respond to questioning by UN HRC members, completely neglected to respond to criticisms regarding Stand Your Ground in their written report. We await their response Friday.
Meanwhile, Florida legislators have been swiftly moving on a Stand Your Ground expansion bill, SB /HB89. The bill has passed out of the House and passed through the Senate Judiciary Committee on the first day of Florida's legislative session. It would extend immunity under Stand Your Ground to those who fire warning shots at another individual based on subjective fears or perceptions. The bill is ill-conceived and should be reconsidered in light of national, and now international, concerns regarding Florida-type Stand Your Ground laws.
Visit www.dreamdefenders.org/DDATTheUN for resources on the Dream Defenders' trip to the Geneva, including daily blog posts; Ahmad Abuznaid's statement to the Deputy High Commissioner; and the Dream Defenders' shadow report submitted to the United Nations on Stand Your Ground.
Writing is Fighting: How Journalists Can Tackle Campus Sexual Violence
by Emily Joveski
Sandra Diaz of the Canadian Women’s Foundation speaks on a panel at Ryerson, Mar. 4. (Photo courtesy Emily Joveski)
Stephanie Guthrie is well aware that the pen is oft mightier than the sword.
“I’m going to tell you something you may not know,” the bespectacled feminist advocate said to a room of mostly Ryerson University journalism students in Toronto, Canada. “Words are political. Your job as journalists is a political one.”
Guthrie was one of five speakers at a panel called Media Coverage of Sexual Violence on Campus, held at Ryerson last week. The panel discussed ways journalists can responsibly report on sexual violence. Much of the discussion was centred on driving home the fact that rape culture exists everywhere, including Canadian university campuses.
This isn’t just happening during frosh week. You may have heard about the University of Ottawa student union leader, Anne-Marie Roy, who was recently the subject of a sexually violent Facebook conversation between male members of the student leadership. They said, “Someone needs to punish her with their shaft.” You may not have heard that the same week Anne-Marie Roy went public about the graphic Facebook conversation, the U of O’s men’s hockey team was suspended amid a sexual assault investigation involving several of the players. An assistant coach said the incident has been blown out of proportion.
In 2012, there was a string of sexual assaults across several Toronto neighborhoods, including an incident around Ryerson. In the span of two weeks, six incidents of sexual assault were reported on Ryerson campus. Toronto Police and Ryerson’s emergency and security services encouraged women to be vigilant about their surroundings. This attitude, that places the responsibility on women to avoid sexual assault, is what prompted Stephanie Guthrie to organize block parties where women and men could come together to reclaim our neighbourhoods as safe spaces. Guthrie says, however, that the same night she hosted a party in Ryerson’s Pitman Quad, a woman was assaulted at another party on campus.
Cindy Baskin, a professor at Ryerson’s School of Social Work points to the over-sexualized Pocahontas—or “Pocahottie”—Halloween costume as further evidence of persistent sexist and racist stereotypes on campus. Last year, “Eskimo cutie” and “sexy Indian” costumes were for sale at the campus bookstore of McMaster University. Aboriginal women in particular are vastly overrepresented in terms of racialized and sexualized violence, and shamefully underrepresented in the media. “Aboriginal women are seen as disposable, often stereotyped in the media as prostitutes, welfare recipients, and sluts,” says Baskin, who is of Mi’kmaq and Irish descent. She calls for Ryerson’s Journalism School to take the lead in developing a course that focuses on reporting Aboriginal issues.
The media is a crucial player in how sexual violence is perceived. News stories may over-report what the victim was wearing or how they were behaving, or how the perpetrator was such an upstanding member of the community. This perpetuates victim blaming. Sandra Diaz of the Canadian Women’s Foundation cites a recent poll that says 19 per cent of Canadians—both men and women—believe that a woman encourages sexual assault when she is drunk. Eleven per cent of Canadians believe that a woman who wears a short skirt is provoking assault. “Rape predates miniskirts,” says Diaz. “Everyday, women are raped at home, sober, wearing a baggy tracksuit.”
Yet even when reporters take pains to accurately and respectfully report on sexual assault cases, on the next page we have journalists like Barbara Kay and Margaret Wente insisting that rape culture doesn’t exist, that feminists are delusional and that college girls just need to stop drinking so much. Excuse me, Ms. Wente, but this is rape culture. And that type of word vomit needs to end.
When sexual assault happens on campus, it’s not because of student drinking or girls wearing short skirts. It’s because we live in a culture that encourages male sexual aggression and the use of physical and emotional violence against women. Rape culture says that sexual violence is a fact of life and that the best women can do is try not to encourage men to rape them. The fact is that men are almost always the perpetrators of sexual violence, and men need to be part of the solution. “At the core of rape culture on campus is how we raise men and boys,” says Ron Couchman, a spokesman for the White Ribbon Campaign, which is aimed at engaging men and boys in conversations about stopping violence against women. “It’s important to include and engage men,” says Couchman, “but also for men not to dominate the conversation, and to provide space for women’s voices.”
It’s important for everyone to be engaging their friends, family, classmates and coworkers in conversations about rape culture. But it’s up to journalists to provide space for the stories of women—especially stories that often go unheard, like those of trans people and First Nations women.
When journalists report responsibly on sexual violence, we’ll talk less about preventing rape, and more about stopping it.
For more information, visit the Toronto-based Femifesto for a toolkit for journalists writing about sexual assault. And if you’re still unsure about what rape culture is, check out this great post by feminist blogger Melissa McEwan titled “Rape Culture 101.”
This post was originally published by RyersonFolio.
Like many university students these days, especially those also pursuing Arts degrees, I look toward the future in this constantly changing and hectic world with blank, undiscerning eyes. I often wonder to myself how the hell I am going to fit into this world.
Part of my musing includes wondering where I’ll live when I’m older. I can’t really see myself moving back to suburban New Jersey, but New York is obviously pretty cool. Living in utopian Canada has jaded my view of the U.S. though, so maybe I should consider staying here: I love Montreal, but am skeptical on whether or not I’d be able to learn enough French to completely integrate into this city.
I often wonder if my queerness will resign me to always living in large, urban areas. I knew very little about Montreal before coming to school here, but as I made the decision to come here as a closeted teenager, I hoped it would be a good place to figure my queer self out. It has far surpassed the few expectations I had.
Whether on purpose or inadvertently, cities seem to be the places where queer communities form, a fact with historical precedent. It was not until the late 19th century, following powerful forces of urbanization across Europe and North America, that same-sex relations led to the creation of a ‘homosexual identity,’ challenging the perception that these were merely sinful acts anyone was capable of.
Bert Hansen’s chapter in Framing Disease: Studies in Cultural History outlines the medicalization of homosexuality in North America in the last decades of the 19th century. Although homosexuality was stigmatized as a disease, the rise of sexologists across Europe and North America pioneered an important recognition and acknowledgement of (what was then termed) ‘the homosexual.’
In the U.S., Hansen remarks that urbanization in the 19th century brought people away from their family-farming communities and toward cities, offering greater opportunities for people – first men, and later women – to pursue sex differently. Those with same-sex desires seemed to find each other. As meeting places such as bars and parks formed, leading to clashes with doctors, reformers, and police, these communities developed a greater sense of self-awareness.
Throughout the first half of the 20th century in the U.S., which brought new waves of urbanization, cities continued to be the sites of relaxed sexual morals, offering greater opportunities for sexual experimentation and fulfillment. Since then, what is considered the ‘gay liberation movement’ of the 1960s and 1970s, marked by events such as the Stonewall riots in New York in 1969, was focused on urban areas. Similarly, AIDS activism in the 1980s and 1990s was centred in San Francisco and New York, where large populations of gay men meant many people were affected by the epidemic.
This is a cursory look at queer history, but it is nonetheless easy to focus on cities when examining the advances and changes in perception of queer people. Today, queer communities still seem to have the greatest visibility and recognition in urban centres.
Nevertheless, contemporary writers, many of them in Canada, have focused on reclaiming the notion of the rural queer, establishing themselves as more relevant to LGBTQ populations than previously recognized. Lesley Marple, an LGBTQ advocate based in Nova Scotia, writes about the privileging of urban queerness and the need for greater interaction between queer communities inRural Queers? The Loss of the Rural in Queer.
According to Marple, “Within the broader queer community, the rural queer needs space to talk about areas of struggle, without being dismissed with the familiar quote ‘why don’t you just move to the city?’ as though urban life is the solution to queer challenges.” Rural queer people need space to be respected and acknowledged, instead of disregarded and undermined.
I definitely find myself guilty of an urban-queer superiority complex, and Marple’s call for greater interaction, without urban queer people belittling the lifestyle choices of their rural counterparts, is valid and salient. With greater recognition and respect, increased solidarity between the various queer communities could result in increased visibility and acceptance of rural queer people, both by their urban counterparts and broader communities. The advancement of rural queerness, with activism focused outside cities, can only mean greater visibility, acceptance, and progress for more LGBTQ populations.
Although articles such as Marple’s have helped me gain greater respect for rural queer people, at this point in my life, I know a city is where I need to be. In part it’s my personality; I like to be around people and am extroverted in some ways. I found integrating into Montreal’s queer community difficult at first, but have since enjoyed and benefited from interacting with more queer people. If I had gone to college in New Jersey, the only other option I considered besides coming to Montreal, I can’t see myself having become the gender-fucking, sparkly nail polish-wearing, proud queer that I am today.
I couldn’t wait to get out of my stuffy, conservative New Jersey town where I still don’t feel completely comfortable being the person I am. While I’ve had friends from small towns and rural areas struggle with their sexualities, many queer friends from urban areas tell stories of coming out at younger ages, sometimes with easier transitions. Of course, it’s all based on context, and everyone’s journey of sexual self discovery is different. Marple asserted that urban and rural queer people have various privileges, face different struggles, and confront diverse challenges.
I can’t help but see cities as the places where the largest queer communities will exist, be recognized, and mobilize. Cities have been centres of queer activism, and they will continue to be. However, that’s not to diminish the importance and credibility of rural queer people. The unity of various queer communities could mean stronger activism and a greater push for equality, acceptance, and respect. Above all, I hope a conglomeration of queer communities means allowing for any queer person to be who they want to be – free of judgment, violence, and discrimination.
This article was originally published by The McGill Daily.
Barnard College Censors Students for Justice in Palestine
The decision reflects the unfair treatment pro-Palestinian campus activists face across the country
by George Joseph
This Monday, to kick off End Israeli Apartheid Week, the Barnard-Columbia chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine hung up a banner in front of Barnard Hall, featuring a map of historical Palestine. In response, students and parents from campus organizations like Lion PAC and Columbia Barnard Hillel immediately began a concerted email campaign, demanding the sign be removed because of its “anti-Semitic” content. And so, despite the fact that SJP obtained official permission to put up the banner, even explaining the message of their sign beforehand, Barnard President Debora Spar made the decision to tear down the banner the next morning.
The banner, as shown below, depicts a map of historic Palestine to affirm “the connection that Palestinians living in the diaspora, the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and as citizens inside of Israel, feel for one another, despite their fragmentation across time and space,” said SJP organizer Feride Eralp. Nonetheless, Columbia Barnard Hillel President Hannah Spellman claimed that such a display was “offensive and threatening” because it did not include Israeli territorial markings. Yet, despite the obviously contestable meaning of the sign among the student body, Barnard’s administration promptly decided to rip off the banner, effectively violating their own space policies in order to favor the demands, and artistic interpretations, of pro-Israeli campus organizations. Did the banner, which had already been approved, become “anti-Semitic” and “threatening” in the eyes of administrators over night?
“It has been a long-standing tradition to allow any recognized Barnard or Columbia student group to reserve a space and hang a banner promoting their event,” acknowledged Barnard President Deborah Spar in an internal email to Lion PAC (SJP received no such personal email). But nonetheless, she declared, after thanking students for their demands, “We are removing the banner from Barnard Hall at this time and will be reexamining our policy for student banners going forward.” Such a response came as a shock to SJP activists, who were not even informed until campus media picked up on the story.
“People have suggested its not fair to have something so politically charged next to a Barnard logo, but if so, then there needs to be consistency,” said SJP activist and Barnard sophomore Shezza Dallal. “Feminism, Pro-life-these are all very politically charged topics, why were their banners kept up, but ours is brought down now? You cannot just accord freedom of speech until it makes certain people feel uncomfortable.”
Another student, who wanted to go by Khan, complained that both the Columbia and Barnard administrations consistently privilege the needs and beliefs of some student groups over others. “Barnard’s conduct on this was extremely swift. We went to bed having put them up, and in the morning they were gone,” she said. “When we want to get something done, we are not considered a priority. For the Muslim Students Association it has taken two years for us to get a regular religious life advisor, but when one individual, former Hillel president or not, made a Facebook status, all of a sudden this blows up into immediate action.”
In her email to Lion PAC, Barnard president Deborah Spar claimed that the censorship was necessary because her administration’s approval of one hand-painted sign, depicting a map of historical Palestine, gives “the impression that the College sanctions and supports” SJP activities. What impression then do the multimillion dollar Birthright trips, officially associated with Barnard, give in comparison? While one student organization can’t even put up a map of many students’ homeland, another is encouraged to promote and expand programs, which normalize the oppression of the Palestinian people and strive to create a new generation of Zionist apologists.
The decision is part of a national crack down on Students for Justice in Palestine. Today, for example, Max Blumenthal reported in Mondoweiss that the Northeastern University administration suspended their SJP chapter for the year and is threatening two activists with expulsion and NYPD style interrogations for the high crime of leafleting mock eviction notices, drawing attention to the Israeli practice of placing demolition notices on Palestinians’ homes about to be bulldozed. Surprisingly, the Northeastern Hillel chapter railed against these flyers because they “alarmed and intimidated students,” but did not release a follow up statement condemning the state of Israel for the alarm and intimidation stemming from actual Palestinian evictions every day.
In his report on the administrative crackdown at Northeastern, Blumenthal explains, “The suspension of Northeastern SJP is the culmination of a long-running crusade against the group led by powerful pro-Israel outfits based in Boston,” including Charles Jacobs, the founder of the anti-Muslim non-profit Americans for Peace and Tolerance. In the past, Jacobs has claimed that Students for Justice in Palestine are “anti-Semites, Israel haters” attempting to “justify a second Holocaust, the mass murder of Jews” and possessed with “an irrational, seething animus against the Jew of nations, Israel.”
“I stand with the SJP students at Northeastern,” said Columbia sophomore Ferial Massoud. “This is a part of a larger agenda on the part of universities to crack down on pro-Palestinian activists, which is preposterous not only because of the unjust bias of the administration, but more importantly because the university is one of the only places today where students are supposed to have freedom of expression.”
At Barnard and Northeastern, SJP activists were disappointed by this absurd rationale for their censorship, but nonetheless refused to be silent. In the last few days alone, Northeastern SJP students have raised thousands of signatures to drop the absurd charges against the two targeted students, and at Barnard students have decided to go out onto campus everyday to share their experiences with the larger community. “As long as injustice exists we’ll continuing speaking out, because we refuse to be censored,” declared Barnard first year and SJP organizer Jannine Massoud. “It is our duty to speak out because so many Palestinians cannot still to this day.”
Students Seek Full Disclosure on Agreements Between Western Washington University, Banks
by Shane Nelson
In a letter delivered on Thursday, March 6, Western Washington University's Student Labor Action Project asked President Bruce Shepard to publicly disclose all agreements Western has with any bank.
Western junior Kelly Pride is a member of SLAP and wants to know if companies are profiting from student debt in any way.
The Western Front attempted to reach President Shepard for comment Saturday, March 8. However, Shepard was unable to meet for an interview until Wednesday, March 12.
Pride believes Western’s affiliation with banks could potentially affect choices made by the administration, in regard to the school, and students have the right to know what might be influencing Western’s decisions, she said.
SLAP is a joint initiative of Jobs with Justice and the United States Student Association, which allows students to fight social and economic injustice and aims to improve student power and workers’ rights, on campus and in the Bellingham community.
“The letter we put together was to call on the university to publicly disclose any agreements they have with private banks or financial institutions,” said Western senior Patrick Stickney, chair of SLAP.
On Friday, Dec. 17, 2013, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) told all national banks to publicly disclose agreements with colleges and universities to market credit, debit and prepaid cards offered to students, according to the CFPB website.
“It is critical that these agreements are disclosed, as urged by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,” Stickney said. “Students deserve to know if any agreements exist between the university and companies that profit from student debt.”
Before the CFPB statement, colleges and universities only had to disclose agreements with financial institutions regarding college credit cards, not debit or prepaid cards, preferred private student loans, deposit accounts, financial aid disbursement and other products for students, according to the CFPB website.
In 2008, Congress passed a law requiring schools to disclose preferred lender arrangements with student loan providers and establish a code of conduct for school financial aid officials, according to the CFPB website.
Western’s Higher One, a financial firm, holds 57 percent of national college card agreements, according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report.
This report, “College Debit Card: Actions Needed to Address ATM Access, Student Choice and Transparency” was released Thursday, Feb. 13 and showed most college cards had fees similar to comparable products provided by banks.
Higher One users average $47 in annual fees compared to the average $180 for prepaid card users, $197 for national bank users and $350 for regional bank users, according to a Higher One study.
Stickney was unable to find any information regarding agreements between Western and Higher One, and he hopes this information will soon be on the front page of Western’s website.
“If Western isn’t willing to publish this information, they can expect students to push back until they publicly disclose agreements,” Stickney said.
Most college debit card agreements are available to the public, but many are very difficult to find and require a formal request with the state, according to a survey submitted to the CFPB in 2012 by The National Association of College and University of Business Officers.
“Western’s Student Labor Action Project has six to seven active members, but this is an issue students across campus [and the nation] support,” Stickney said.
This is article was originally published by The Western Front.
Liberty’s finally got a full-time job as a writer, which has been her dream. And in typical fashion, she now hates it. Read about the workaday blues in the new installment of #LibertyForAll.
"Liberty For All" is co-published by CultureStrike.Net and Youngist.org.
What’s the Matter With California? Student Dispatches From Santa Cruz to the Border
Students march to the SDSU president's office. (Credit: Nadir Bouhmouch)
(This post which was edited by Youngist contributor James Cersonsky, was originally published by The Nation and is republished here with permission.)
Contact [email protected] with any questions, tips or proposals. Edited by James Cersonsky (@cersonsky).
1. As Napolitano Sits, Campus Occupations Spread
On March 5, as UCLA students died-in against deportations, #not1more continued to growand students at the largely working class Community College of San Francisco prepared further action against a potential shutdown, students at the University of California–Santa Cruz took up Berkeley’s call for escalating action against UC President and former Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano. Fresh off major wins for strike-ready UC service workers and Santa Cruz teaching assistants, students and workers rallied to make clear that these developments are part of a larger struggle to reclaim the university. After marching to McHenry Library, students entered the Hahn Student Services building and subsequently occupied it for eighteen hours. There, we called for Napolitano’s resignation and for workers’ ongoing demands—safer staffing, smaller classes and work for undocumented graduate students—to be met. Through daybreak on March 6, Hahn, normally a space of loans, fees and student-judicial affairs, became a site for students to strategize resistance to the dual challenges of racism and privatization.
—Autonomous Students
2. As Cal State Tuition Skyrockets, Students Mass Across the State
California State University’s new tactic of adding “student success” fees on a campus-by-campus basis, a fee hike by any other name, is drawing criticism from students, faculty andeditorial boards on campus and off. For a week, students at San Diego State University have been trying to meet with their president—who gained statewide notoriety in 2011 when he was awarded a 30 percent raise at the same time that a fee hike was implemented—after arubber-stamp committee recommended fees be raised in fall 2014. Students have staged multiple sit-ins, marches and rallies on campus against the hike, decrying undemocratic decision-making and demanding a meeting with the president, who has yet to even respond to letters or e-mail via intermediaries. Leading up to the CSU Board of Trustees meeting on March 26, students at SDSU, Fullerton and Dominguez Hills, all affected by the fees, will continue building pressure.
—Bo Elder
3. High Schoolers Rally Over Shutdown
In February, LA’s Roosevelt High School Academy of Environmental & Social Policy received a letter from Superintendent John Deasy directing this small and notably successful school to join a larger campus in a new neighborhood or close down. Despite four hours of protest by parents and students outside LAUSD headquarters on February 25, nine speakers who addressed the school board this week and questionable claims of fiscal unsustainability, the community has not been able to convince the district to reconsider this decision—made without any input from students, parents or staff. We are fighting for our school because it is safe, a place where we are involved and, most importantly, to assert the importance of student voice—which the district is quick to ignore.
—Gabriela Castaneda
4. Trans* Students Win—Again
On February 24, the California Secretary of State confirmed that right-wing efforts to repeal the School Success and Opportunity Act, AB 1266, failed to qualify for the ballot. The law provides important guidance for schools to ensure that all students, including transgender students, have equal access to facilities and services. Youth, LGBT, racial justice and statewide teacher and parent organizations formed the Support All Students coalition after the law’s passage last summer, working together to educate Californians on the experiences transgender youth face in schools and how districts can support all students. The law went into effect January 1; now, youth activists are focused on local implementation. Students can start an implementation campaign in their district or support other Gay-Straight Alliance activists’ campaigns through the GSA Network Unite! campaign platform, which is also available to youth outside California.
—GSA Network of California
5. Title IX Deck Gets Stacked
On February 19, thirty-one current and former UC-Berkeley students filed two federal complaints, under Title IX and the Clery Act, citing gross administrative inaction and conductin preventing rape, supporting survivors and punishing those who commit such acts. This follows nine months after an initial federal complaint, representing nine students, was filed. The public survivors are committed to holding the administration responsible for allowing an environment that is unsafe for survivors and fails to sanction appropriately those who commit acts of sexual violence. The movement to end sexual violence on college campuses is a nationwide issue, with several other universities, including the University of North Carolina, USC and Swarthmore, also facing potential investigations, and Northwestern studentssitting-in this week.
—Aryle Butler, Iman Stenson, Sofie Karasek, Meghan Warner, Shannon Thomas and Nicoletta Commins
6. NAFTA Returns—to Silence
On March 6, the International Relations and Pacific Studies department at the University of California–San Diego held a conference titled “Mexico Moving Forward”—a convening of economists, industrial capitalists and artists, opening with a speech by Janet Napolitano, celebrating the “benefits” of the North American Free Trade Agreement. In fact, NAFTA has decimated the lives of millions in Mexico—while also sparking the rise of the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional. In protest of the UC system for perpetuating neoliberal policies, and in solidarity with those who have resisted or lost their lives under NAFTA,students and community groups staged a silent march with ski masks and red and black bandanas to the building where the conference was held. The march was modeled after an action in December 2012, where Zapatistas marched in perfect silence to the center of San Cristóbal de las Casas to show that they are still present and resisting.
—San Diego Student and Community Groups Against NAFTA
7. #VisitFL
On March 4, the first day of Florida’s 2014 legislative session, the Dream Defenders, alongside community allies, hosted our own State of the State address, #VisitFL, to discuss the disproportionate incarceration of youth of color; privatization of the state’s juvenile prison system; and the impact of laws that encourage violence against black and brown youth like Stand Your Ground. After the address, we marched to the fourth floor of the Florida capitol outside the doors where Governor Rick Scott was supposed to deliver his own annual address. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement demanded that we leave, but we refused. As our chants were heard in both the House and Senate chambers, a recess was called, and, for the first time in history, the governor took a secret entrance into the room. Meanwhile, some legislators offered their support. On that same morning, the Florida Senate Judiciary Committee quietly and swiftly passed CS/HB89, a so-called “warning shot” bill that would expand the Stand Your Ground defense by allowing individuals to fire warning shots when they perceive a threat, without the obligation to retreat. HB89 passed overwhelmingly less than one week after a jury in Jacksonville chose not to convict Michael Dunn for the murder of unarmed 17-year-old Jordan Davis.
—Dream Defenders
8. #Fight4aFuture
Over the weekend of February 21 to 23, Generation Progress brought together young people from across the country for a first-of-its-kind #Fight4AFuture National Gun Violence Prevention Summit. Summit attendees had a range of backgrounds, from a former gang member, to a 16-year-old man who has had twenty-eight friends and family die as a result of gun violence, to the brother of a victim from Sandy Hook Elementary, to the editor-in-chief ofGlobal Grind and representatives from the White House. Participants included Million Hoodies Movement for Justice, Jr. Newtown Action Alliance and the Georgia Gun Sense Coalition. Attendees engaged in small group discussions to develop local plans of action—and hatched plans as well for a national activist network to be announced soon.
—Sarah Clements
9. When Will Obama Get It?
On March 2, 398 students, among a group of more than 1,000 protesters, were arrested in front of the White House following a two-mile march from Georgetown University. Amid chants of “We love you” and “Arrest my friends,” the students, 250 of whom were zip-tied to the White House fence, awaited arrest under freezing rain and wind—a process that lasted more than six hours. Our reason for this act of civil disobedience was simple: to make it clear to President Obama that we did not vote him into office to have environmental disaster exacerbated by the Keystone XL Pipeline, and to stress the environmental, climatic, economic, political and social consequences that would arise if the pipeline were to be approved. As we await President Obama’s decision over the coming months, activists across the country will be delivering comment cards and petitions to Washington, pressuring elected officials and ramping up direct action.
—Erin Fagan
10. Who Speaks for Mass Incarceration?
This winter in West Philadelphia, FAAN Mail, a collective of young women of color, organized a screening and discussion of Orange Is the New Black, the Netflix series set in a women’s prison. Community members concerned about—and personally affected by—mass incarceration shared dialogue about the portrayal and realities of prison. Activists talked about local organizing efforts after exploring the following questions: What value, if any, doesOITNB offer in the movement to end mass incarceration? What aspects of the show are realistic or fantasy? What do OITNB audiences need to know about mass incarceration?
Today I woke up and my mind rested on Jordan Davis. My body shook with anger and my blood boiled with discontent towards a prison-industrial-complex that continues to make excuses for the execution of Black and Brown youth by law enforcement and racist vigilantes.
Oh, mama don’t you see the empty field of flowers that now cover all your children’s graves?
I woke up and my tears watered the graves of the 26 children (we know there are many more), whose deaths were justified in Stand Your Ground cases.
This article was originally published by FSU News.
Regina Joseph is the Vice-President of the Dream Defenders FSU.
Did Jan Brewer do the right thing for the wrong reasons? And why is it so hard to relate to social justice issues that don't impact us directly? All this and many more questions in this week's #LibertyForAll.
"Liberty For All" is co-published by CultureStrike.Net and Youngist.org.
Institutions dedicated to the pursuit of the ‘common good’ will be unable to forge meaningful coalitions, strategize policy interventions, or leverage communities’ collective voices without integrated youth at argue youth at the highest levels of spaces invested with real decision-making power; this applies even to that most storied institution of collaboration, the United Nations.
A full one billion people fall into the category of 15-24 year olds. Our generation is one of the most diverse in human history. We’re polyglot, multicultural, and are connecting with each other across oceans, continents, and time zones. We’ve come of age during a lynchpin movement for the climate justice movement, beneftted from the gains of the LGBTQ+ rights movement, and are ourselves struggling against the specter of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
Any way you spin it, our generation is facing social, economic, political, and ecological hurdles previously unknown. We’re expected to curb decades long bouts of inaction to mitigate the effects of climate change, find some semblance of balance in a chaotic global economic system, and find beauty in the cacophony of our 6 billion voices.
Working with an American NGO, SustainUS, a youth-organized effort to increase our generation’s representation in international governance spaces, we advocated for a multidimensional policy platform at the 52nd United Nations Commission on Social Development.
It might sound empowering to be in a space so given to the diversity of the human experience. Yet, as many of us learned, many United Nations and the international state system is loath to admit a serious flaw in their understanding of how change happens: the necessity of intergenerational leadership.
The continued underrepresentation of the youth community is not only unjust – it’s strategically unwise given the power landscape of the coming decades, creates leadership gaps, skill mismatches, and unsustainable leadership structures. In fact, many youth change-agents would like nothing else than to engage in intergenerational work that isn’t consigned to continuously remake the wheel each time a new class of organizers graduate college.
Meaningful progress has been made by UN entities and member-states in the past. In December 2012, the UN Population Fund convened the Bali Global Youth Forum to review the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development Beyond 2014. The frameworks generated by the youth present (as well as thousands of youth delegates participating virtually) were quite progressive and focused a good deal of attention on the sexual and reproductive rights of all youth, including those traditionally marginalized by service providers.
From 2003 to 2005, the government of South Africa included a massive civic society engagement program to facilitate the development of a new Children’s Act that included consultations with children using accessible language and having provided appropriate legislative training.
Some Western European countries have even gone further and established new ‘youth delegate’ positions elected by popular vote. Youth delegates currently represent youth constituencies of countries like Germany, the Netherlands, Romania, Bulgaria, and Belgium with real decision-making power.
As these examples demonstrate, youth are sometimes present in policy-making spaces at the national and international level. There have certainly been occasions where members of the political class decided to include young people in a specific debate. Yet, the systemic validation of youth voices remains lacking in UN spaces. We are too often relegated to ‘side-events,’ NGO speakers’ lists treated only at the end of any formal session, and tokenized by moderators seeking a brief interlude between ambassador’s diatribes. As the world’s premier organization dedicated to building sustainable, resilient democratic spaces, the UN can and must do more in the coming months, years, and decades.
To begin, 2014 will see continued work across the UN system to articulate the Post-2015 Development Agenda, the successor to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Additionally, Secretary Ban Ki-Moon continues plans to scale up his plans for a new Partnerships Facility to build the capacity of NGOs working in concert with various UN agencies, programs, and funds. Given the increasing severity of the global climate crisis, attention will also go to the development of additional Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) alongside the Secretary General’s “Sustainable Energy for All” Initiative. It’s in these conversations that SustainUS and other youth delegations will look to the UN to center the voices of youth and those directly impacted by policy shortcomings.
All in all, there are a host of impactful policy and framework discussions to come in the next twelve months which have the potential to impact international development practices for years to come. The silo of the youth movement prevents us from leveraging our potential most effectively to address these issues. In short, we’re tired of the kids table; what we need – and what you need – is for us to be at each and every table, fully integrated into the meaningful struggles to leverage our collective, intergenerational power to confront the world’s social ills.
This article was originally published on Sustain US: US Youth for Sustainable Development.
I am a Black student at Mount Holyoke College, the first of the seven sister schools, which was started because no other American colleges accepted women. Mount Holyoke women are taught to be bold, to never fear change, and to speak up against injustice… unless you’re a student of color. 177 years later white male privilege still reigns supreme here. And it is actively reinforced by campus police.
I spent the early hours of Saturday morning at the South Hadley Police Department having been arrested at Mount Holyoke for “breach of peace.” This is how the story begins.
My boyfriend Sam came to visit me on a whim so I took my blankets and my things to an unoccupied room in the dorm where my friends and I often hang out. I have a roommate who I couldn’t kick out on such short notice so I set up the other room for Sam and I to hangout. On Friday night Sam and I were drinking in that room with some of our friends when suddenly two officers from campus police showed up.
When Sam came back from the bathroom the situation was still calm. One officer asked if we knew each other which I said we did. The officer shook Sam’s hand, introduced himself and apologized that they had to meet in these circumstances. When the officer realized that the room was not assigned to me he asked me to leave. I began to take my pillows and he told me to put them down. Everything was to stay there because he couldn’t confirm that I wasn’t stealing the property. I resigned then to just taking my phone and my laptop. But the officer would not let me take my laptop because he assumed that I was stealing it, they would have to take the laptop with them, he said.
There were very easy ways to check if the laptop was mine. I showed him the user name on the laptop and it obviously matched the name on my student ID, still this was not sufficient. And yet as a white man, although not even a student, Sam was allowed to take his bag and laptop out of the room without having to prove anything to anyone. When he takes stuff he is just taking his things, when I do, I am stealing.
He could have walked out with any number of things and never have been seen or heard of again. He could have even walked out with my laptop and that would have been fine. I am assumed guilty and not given a chance to prove myself innocent. Sam is assumed innocent and has no need to prove anything. The only only thing he needed, to prove that he wasn’t stealing, was to be white. Whereas they know that I am a Mount Holyoke student, they had my ID, they saw the username was mine and they know where I live.
They began to converse with him politely, discussing my situation with him like I wasn’t in the room, like Sam was the student here, like I was not the one being (wrongly) accused, or like Sam was my father and they were discussing with him the actions of his dependent. Or they were just fellow white men discussing the audacity of a Black person to not accept racist treatment.
Officer: “She just needs to calm down.”
Sam: “I hear you.”
Then Sam proceeded to come to me to tell me I needed to more cooperative. Cooperative to being accused of smoking weed and stealing? Cooperative to having my things confiscated while he keeps his? He again told me to relax and in a slightly higher voice I explained that he needed to stop telling me that. The officer called the dean on duty.
I was happy to have a dean come to the room. I knew that she would see how ridiculous the situation was. Besides, having a woman in the room would be helpful (it was becoming unclear whether it was my race or my gender that warranted this treatment.) I waited calmly, but Sam kept coming to me, telling me to calm down. I told him to leave me alone about six times in the presence of the officers. They said nothing.
When the dean got there she was the first person who tried to listen to my side of the story. I explained that I was not smoking weed and asked her if she could even smell any weed. “I am not trained to,” she said, because there wasn’t even the faintest trace of weed smell in that room. But if the story got to the dean of students she would say it was my word against campus police’s and she would shrug and say she has to go with campus police’s word. Maybe it would be useful if the deans on duty were equipped to verify the accusations they allow to be passed on us.
The officer interjected on my conversation with the dean to add that I was refusing to leave. I asked him in front of the dean, “Was I or was I not trying to leave when you told me to?” Three times he refused to answer my question. And I pleaded with the dean, to the point where I was in tears, to see how unjust the situation was. I was not refusing to leave I was refusing to leave without my things. I was getting very frustrated that nobody was hearing me.
Sam came up to me yet again, in front of the two officers and the dean, telling to calm down. They all saw me ask him for the seventh time to leave me alone. Even though they could see that it was upsetting me, they did not ask him to respect my wishes and my personal space. At some point I was saying, “Please, please leave me alone” in tears. They watched him continuously come into my face. And then I finally said: “You do not go here, you do not face the same consequences that I am facing right now.”
The whole time I was saying this both Sam and the cops were repeatedly speaking over me saying “Maya, Maya.” And “You need to calm down right now.” I said to Sam, “You can’t be serious. He can introduce himself to you, shake your hand. He had no such courtesy with me.” Again the whole time as I am speaking to him the officers and the dean are in the background repeatedly saying “Maya, Maya.” Sam said “No, you don’t understand.”
Me: “I can’t believe this. I actually cannot believe this.”
Sam: “Let it be done right now!” he says raising his voice. Nobody tells him to calm down.
Me: “Wow, I cannot believe this, I actually cannot believe this.”
All four of them” Maya, Maya”
Officer: “If you don’t calm down, I’m placing you under arrest do you understand that?”
I told him that it would not be the first time white people refused to see their own privilege. Then Sam came and put his hand on me.
I shouted, “Sam if you don’t leave me alone I swear!!”
Sam, in a soft condescending voice: “Maya, Maya you need to listen to me.”
Me: “Sam-“ He tries to grab my arm, I move it away. “Sam-” He grabs my arm. Shouting, “Sam you are aggravating me to a point that I don’t want to get to!”
Officer: “Turn around!” He turns me toward the wall. “Place your hands behind your back.”
I did not fight them off or resist at all.
Officer: “You’re under arrest, ok? Breach of peace…You know I really wish it did not come to this but we have no choice, Maya.”
While I was in handcuffs crying quietly the officer had a conversation with Sam and the dean.
Officer: “We are transporting her down to South Hadley PD. If she has $45 she can probably make bail.”
Sam: “I’ll see her out.”
Officer: “But right now she’s…she’s…she needs to calm down.”
Dean: “I agree.”
I have been quietly crying in the corner.
Officer: “If she doesn’t calm down we can’t bring her back.”
I was transported to the station in handcuffs, I was searched, had mug shots taken, and slept in a cell till the bail clerk arrived. I had refused to pay bail and was ready to spend the weekend in jail. But when the bail clerk heard their accusations he could not see the seriousness of my offense. He told them to drive me back to school and to bring me to court on Monday. Not once were my rights read to me.
I made a voice recording of everything that took place leading up to my arrest, which is how I can quote everyone verbatim. At some point while Sam was conversing with the officers, my laptop started playing “say something I’m giving up on you.” A hilarious moment fit for the big screen. But he did not say something. He failed to act. As loving and kind as Sam is, and as much as he considers himself an ally to people of color, on that day he stood firmly on the side of white oppression. His whiteness alone guaranteed him their attention, he could have asked them to afford me the same courtesy. On the recording it is clear that every single time I spoke, the dean, the officers and Sam were interrupting, interjecting and talking over me. The best thing he could have done would have been to point out to campus police that they were wrongly accusing me and that they were treating him, a complete stranger, better than they were treating a student. And when Sam saw that I was being arresting for finally reacting to his insistent provocation he needed to tell them that “She did tell me to leave her alone and I kept approaching her.” Because I did repeatedly ask him and at one point begged him to leave me alone, but they watched him and allowed him to ignore my wishes.
A Black man in the same context would have never been allowed to keep harassing me. And if he grabbed me, that would have constituted as assault and aggression. And certainly a Black man would have never been allowed to leave that room with a laptop without having to prove that it was his. I understand that Sam was not aware of the dynamics at play. But that is what makes white privilege so lethal. So-called allies of people of color, acknowledging your white privilege means realizing that you are not being treated respectfully because you are a better person, you are being treated differently because you are white.
Mount Holyoke campus police, your job is to protect Mount Holyoke students, even if they are Black. You not only wrongly accused me of smoking weed, you accused me of theft and then allowed a man to continuously harass me in front of you. Mount Holyoke campus police and the dean on duty watched a man put his hands on me, and then arrested me for shouting about it. It seems as a Black person your only option is to allow yourself to be mistreated. To be wrongly accused and harassed. A white man can go as far as grabbing your body. It is your crime to not allow him to.
*The names in the story have been changed.
This article was originally published at Double X Chromosome.
Lupita Nyong’o and the Evolving Paradox of Black Femininity
by Hannah Giorgis
(Photo Credit: NY Magazine)
It’s no secret that I am a Lupita Nyong’o fan girl. She is gorgeous, graceful, and certifiably ***flawless.
The actress gained worldwide attention for her heart-wrenching portrayal of the enslaved Patsey in Steve McQueen’s much-praised 12 Years A Slave. Having been thrust into the Hollywood spotlight only months ago, Lupita is notably reserved in the public eye—but her powerful presence speaks volumes about the ever-expanding ways in which Black women are complicating archaic notions about our femininity.
In many ways, the logic we ascribed to black female bodies in the antebellum South still applies today. It has certainly changed to complement modernity, and yet myths that posit black women as simultaneously undesirable and hypersexual continue to pervade common narratives. We are either asexual, unfeminine mammy or brazen whore—often forced into the latter category even as children.
Within these rigid confines, there has been little room to craft new models of Black femininity that do not get immediately recast into the old paradigms—expressions of androgyny signifying asexuality and hints of hyperfemininity becoming another visible sign of supposedly latent hypersexuality. Even progressive, beauty standard-challenging feminist blogs call pink-lipstick wearing, purple-haired black women “hard femme” based solely on our phenotypes.
And yet Lupita Nyong’o embraces hyperfemininity so boldly that audiences, critics, and magazine editors alike all recognize she is a force to be reckoned with. With bright colors, sleek silhouettes, and bold necklines, she is taking the fashion world by storm. And people are noticing.
(Photo Credit: US Weekly)
Lupita is a beacon of hope for every dark-skinned, natural-haired girl who grows up being told she looks like a boy, a challenge to the racist, cissexist claims that Black women’s short hair or musculature are inherently masculine. She is an inheritor of the modern legacy that First Lady Michelle Obama also occupies, an Afro-descendant fashion story woven together with palpable white envy.
Her adamantly delicate disposition flies directly in the face of both historic and contemporary falsehoods about Black women as inherently masculine, a quiet rebellion against the standards that pit white femininity as the unreachable standard against which all women must be measured. Her confidence is a powerful message that we need not reach toward the vanishing horizon of white femininity to be considered beautiful; Black women are ethereal on our own shores.
We have always been enough—and sometimes it’s nice to be reminded.
But what’s important isn’t just that Lupita is bursting onto the scene and expanding norms with visible markers of bold femininity. She may be one of few dark-skinned, short-haired women to occupy the national spotlight with feminine poise—but she is also the beneficiary of privileges that many other feminine-presenting dark-skinned women do not enjoy.
A graduate of Yale University School of Drama and daughter of middle-class Kenyan dignitaries, Lupita represents a “respectable” femininity that many low-income black women without her credentials cannot access. Though her demeanor does not make her wholly immune to racist assertions that she is uncouth or undeserving, she is largely shielded from this particular kind of classist misogynoir.
That does not mean her influence is wholly inaccessible to all feminine-presenting Black women—or that the effects of her trailblazing femininity hold no meaning for low-income Black women. Rather, it is simply important to consider many aspects of how femininity are constructed and not pat ourselves on the back for addressing colorism in our analysis.
What does it mean that low-income Black women’s bodies are the first to be ridiculed, to be surveilled, to be sterilized? Meme after meme has come to popularity at the expense of Black women who stand outside the margins of acceptable femininity: who do not speak “standard” English, who do not work in “professional” environments, who do not have access to academia and certainly not the Academy.
Consider Rachel Jeantel, the key prosecutorial witness in the Trayvon Martin case. Both the hatred she received during the trial and the makeover she received after it suggested that her femininity as it stood was too much body and too little weave, too much immigrant and too little English.
Lupita’s dark skin and short hair make her an anomaly in Hollywood’s feminine sphere, but not in the realm of Black femininity. If we are to celebrate the complex layers of Black femininity, we must not simply praise those exceptions whose femininity is highlighted in magazines for the world to see. We must re-envision beauty outside the context of white supremacist standards altogether.
What would it mean for young Black girls to grow up in a world where they didn’t need to speak the Queen’s English or afford designer clothes to be considered ladylike? What if we met young Black girls’ trends with adoration instead of labeling their aesthetic exploration ratchet (until it’s appropriated by more palatable white bodies)? What if we centered Black trans girls and affirmed their femininity from the moment they first express it? What if Black femininity could also validate Black bodies whose femininity is more complicated than our binaries recognize?
Black femininity has always disregarded others’ boundaries—imagine what’s possible if we also dreamt beyond our own.
