Free speech for some, repression for others at Western Washington University

I’m no longer a student at Western Washington University – I’m alumni, oh boy – but for some its just another Spring quarter, which brings with it another day spent avoiding the ignorant, anti-Black, anti-Semitic eyesore that is the Genocide Awareness Project (or if you please, “the GAP”). The GAP is an anti-choice amalgam of righteous Christian rage, enlarged photos of lynched Black men, concentration camps, bloody fetuses, and any and all other offensive equations that could possibly guilt a young woman into a trauma-induced stance against abortion.

I could rail on, but the argument is better left to my more articulate friend Ariel Wetzel, who has written an editorial opposing the GAP for The AS Review, a WWU student paper. Each year Western opens up Red Square for the GAP, citing free speech law. She points out that the GAP can ruin an entire day on campus, complete with police protection, protective fencing, the works, but a single person of color with leaflets – SDS member Karim Ahmath – is the one worthy of ‘disorderly conduct.’

Another extended commentary on the situation, an open letter, has been written by a friend of mine who wishes for the time being to remain anonymous. You’ll find it below. It touches on the GAP but focuses more on Karim Ahmath’s case, spelling out the racist and politically repressive implications of such an incident for WWU. It also describes in detail some of the events that have occurred since Karim’s initial arrest, further revealing the biased nature of WWU’s “free speech” practices.

Dear students of Western Washington University,

Let’s take some time to reflect on this place in which we engage in higher education. Bellingham, a nice-sized, liberally progressive, friendly town is home to the equally progressive Western Washington University: our beloved liberal arts school that prides itself on its commitment to creating a welcoming, diverse campus community.

Racial profiling, a concept that is dismissed as a fabricated, conspiracy-theory by those that have the utmost faith in our law enforcement authorities, is for many white people, like me, a phrase only associated with the New York City and Los Angeles police departments of over twenty years ago. However, allow me to recount to you some disturbing recent events.

Please read on below.

Marker, again

The Zapatistas of Chiapas, Mexico call their gatherings to build international solidarity “Intergalactic.” For some reason, I like to think this playful allusion to the other-wordly would tickle the fancy of French film essayist and man of the world, Chris Marker. Perhaps it’s my ability to imagine this about Marker that makes me so partial to his films. Here are some further thoughts about Marker I had tucked away, forgotten, and neglected to revive for the May 1st Lucid Screening feature.

Marker’s spent a lifetime devoted to politics of the left, but his reputation – in the US anyway – seems to be solely among film buffs, not revolutionaries. He’s known as the purveyor of the film essay, a style of film making that brings together the documentation of History (see Grin without a Cat), or of everyday life (see his travel films) , or of everyday life as History (Le Joli Mai, or, again, the travel films), with a strong narrative commentary spoken over the images.

Spoken narration has a bad reputation amongst politically committed, anti-authoritarian filmmakers. It’s often derided as the “Voice of God,” dictating the meaning of an image and preventing the viewer from interpreting the situation themselves. Marker’s films demonstrate that this needn’t be an iron rule. The Voice of Marker never approaches dictatorship because it always remains his voice. Even his less personal commentary plies the viewer with poetry, with parable – recalling in my mind the words of Walt Whitman: “I project the history of the future.”

Film is a medium of History. In Marker’s work, this is not only the case because film captures the past. Marker mines images of the past for signs of the future. The history of the future that Marker projects is always a refraction, as through a prism, of the past. “After so many stories of men who had lost their memory, here is the story of one who has lost forgetting, and who—through some peculiarity of his nature—instead of drawing pride from the fact and scorning mankind of the past and its shadows, turned to it first with curiosity and then with compassion.”

Here is that story, in part, as commentary from Sans Soleil.

In San Francisco I made the pilgrimage of a film I had seen nineteen times. In Iceland I laid the first stone of an imaginary film. That summer I had met three children on a road and a volcano had come out of the sea. The American astronauts came to train before flying off to the moon, in this corner of Earth that resembles it. I saw it immediately as a setting for science fiction: the landscape of another planet. Or rather no, let it be the landscape of our own planet for someone who comes from elsewhere, from very far away. I imagine him moving slowly, heavily, about the volcanic soil that sticks to the soles. All of a sudden he stumbles, and the next step it’s a year later. He’s walking on a small path near the Dutch border along a sea bird sanctuary.

That’s for a start. Now why this cut in time, this connection of memories? That’s just it, he can’t understand. He hasn’t come from another planet he comes from our future, four thousand and one: the time when the human brain has reached the era of full employment. Everything works to perfection, all that we allow to slumber, including memory. Logical consequence: total recall is memory anesthetized. After so many stories of men who had lost their memory, here is the story of one who has lost forgetting, and who—through some peculiarity of his nature—instead of drawing pride from the fact and scorning mankind of the past and its shadows, turned to it first with curiosity and then with compassion. In the world he comes from, to call forth a vision, to be moved by a portrait, to tremble at the sound of music, can only be signs of a long and painful pre-history. He wants to understand. He feels these infirmities of time like an injustice, and he reacts to that injustice like Ché Guevara, like the youth of the sixties, with indignation. He is a Third Worlder of time. The idea that unhappiness had existed in his planet’s past is as unbearable to him as to them the existence of poverty in their present.

Art that fights back

For over two years now, I’ve been writing with anarchist prisoner Harold H. Thompson. He’s not just an anarchist – really though, who’s just an anarchist??-  but also a writer, a jailhouse lawyer, and a painter.

A few months back, his friend and supporter Josh put on an art auction of his work at the Dry River Collective space in Tucson, AZ. The benefits of the auction went to help pay Harold’s legal fees as he sues the Tennessee Department of Corrections for medical neglect (stemming from incidents you can read about here).

Of his paintings, here are a few of my favorites. Visit the Dry River site for more.

The last two are entitled “Bill” and “Hillary.”

May Day!

Comrade Sean Burke (Bellingham SDS) getting pumped before Tuesday’s May 1st Immigrant Rights Solidarity March, organized by Community to Community Development.

This is actually a really bad photo to illustrate an inspiring march full of over several hundred Latino immigrants and their allies, but its the only photo I managed to get before we all started moving. I spent most of the day videotaping for a documentary film I’m helping to produce (more on that someday).

For better pictures of the day, check out Not in My County (pics look like they might be down at the moment).

There’s some godawful corporate press here that reports the day to be “uneventful” because nobody tussled with the MinuteKlan knuckleheads. Also, at the height of the march, there were twice the number reported in the headline.

For reports on May 1st marches across the country, check out Indymedia’s coverage, or deleteTheBorder.org. In Los Angeles, the LAPD assaulted the crowd with rubber bullets and tear gas; more on that here.

—

I spent the night before the march working hard on a Chris Marker feature for Lucid Screening. I was up ridiculously late, and have this regretful “morning after” feeling about the reviews I did. I’ve been thinking a lot about my writing lately, and feel it tends to be both verbose and repetitive. For writings done in the wee hours of the morning, the Marker bits are all right, but something is telling me I need to work on my shit.

—

And for those that might be wondering, Karim Ahmath’s day in court lasted mere minutes. His lawyer requested the trial be postponed until July, and the request was approved. Meanwhile, organizing continues at Western Washington Univeristy to hold the campus police accountable.

Angela Davis 4.16.07

This Monday, April 16th, Professor Angela Davis addressed Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA on the topic of the Prison Industrial Complex (P.I.C.). Like always, Davis was most adept at drawing connections: she began the night by recognizing the Virginia Tech tragedy, whilst noting the fear-based demands for increased insecurity that are already being made. Following from the definition outlined in her excellent primer Are Prisons Obsolete?, she defined the P.I.C. as the proposition that the proliferation of prisons in the United States is not linked to crime, but rather social and economic factors. In turn, she touched on everything from the numbers of blacks and latinos in prison, to the workings of the global economy, to how the treatment of transgender prisoners reveals prisons as gendering processes.

I really do hope to touch on this topic in a future post, particularly since the Washington State legislature will likely pass a prison reform bill soon. In the meantime, I’ll post the syllabus for the class I taught last year that is based around the above-mentioned book by Professor Davis. Let me know what you think!

The Prison Industrial Complex & Beyond
(Fairhaven College, Fall 2006)

Podunk Punk Rock: Where Oppurtunity Lives

Punks and would-be punkers the world over know “Longview” as the name of Green Day’s song “about boredom, masturbation and dope.” But some punks know Longview as something else: home. And at last, the Longview, WA, punk community has its own Studs Terkel in the likes of Kyle “Ky-Ky” Crawford, veteran zinester of Frailed Roots fame (“a zine that contains personal content” – The Western Front ) . Kyle’s always been a talented writer, but this time he’s given the words over to his friends in his first crack at oral history, resulting in So Longview: A Collection of interviews celebrating and critiquing a NW punk community.

Kyle’s talents carry over very nicely. While some topics in So Longview don’t stray too far from those of the Green Day song (boredom, masturbation, dope… okay, no masturbation), with Kyle’s prompting the interviews get more thoughtful. Ruminations on boredom and beer drinking mix with queries on queerness, gender, non-conformity and the responsibilities of growing up. Kyle had some clear themes in mind when he was asking his interview questions and finding people to talk to, or maybe he’s just a slick editor; whatever the case, he talks to folks in all phases of the punk life, of all classes, of all genders. For every three or four punks crashing on couches and getting by on shit healthcare, another one or two go to college to be a lawyer or a Democrat. For every punk who takes non-conformity to a new level of political activism, another enters the military. For every punk challenging white people’s racism, another is making movie “jokes” about killing hookers. The ugly contradictions are there, but its obvious Kyle wants us to see them.

Kyle now spends most of his days in Bellingham, WA, which is how I know him, but he’s got a special place in his heart for his hometown, which is another way I know him: we’ve shared countless moments recalling our small town lives, sharing how race, class, and rock ‘n roll shaped our mindsets. Often, we’ve shared frustrations at the political pointlessness of punk rock, while we’ve marveled at its ability to unleash total creativity and give meaning to young people amidst the even greater pointlessness of podunk living.The conclusion Kyle has come to – and to which So Longview is a beautiful testament – is that any place, and any punk community, is ultimately the worth of the people involved.

My only misgiving with So Longview is that, in some ways, these interviews really could be from any place. While there’s a reference to a bridge here, or a Chuck E. Cheese there, everything that makes Longview unique as a place has to be read between the lines. Maybe a map would have helped, or a longer intro. Cuz Kyle and I might have similar long, hard thoughts about our small town childhoods, but size is about all our towns have in common. I grew up in a swanky suburb tied at the hip to Seattle, while Longview is a working-class manufacturing town with more of an identity of its own. Sure, Bothell punks had locales for drinking, doping, and rocking – like, say, the woods behind Safeway – but that was mostly because none of us could get our asses to Seattle, and now that we’re grown up (some), nobody I know lives in Bothell any longer. From reading So Longview, it sounds like more folks stay put in Longview for longer.

Shit, even Kyle’s mailing address is still in Longview (though shhh… don’t tell anybody this, but I think its his parents’ house). Write to him ASAP to snag a copy of this zine – reading it beats listening to Green Day any day.

KYLE
136 Tanglewood Dr.
Longview, WA 98632

Or e-mail him at kjcelement [at] yahoo.com .

Falling Rock, Following Rock

Rock Hudson falls and I want to fall with him.

Until this moment, he has been caring and carefree Ron Kirby: more than your common gardener, a wise tender of trees . Two first names makes the Man, and a Man at that, an outwardly heterosexual Henry David, a Thoreau without a complex. Henry David takes a wife. But 1950s America can’t handle a Man so in touch with all that heaven allows (or so this film would have us believe, anyway). So High Society whispers and suddenly the fiance has had second thoughts.

Time has passed. Ron’s love has now returned to him, but he’s off on the hunt and she can’t find him. As she drives off, Ron gets desperate – he calls her name, and the camera captures Kirby against the sky as if to emphasize his vulnerability. Poor Kirby’s even holding a dead pheasant in one hand, a now useless rifle in the other. He can take flight away, but he can’t take flight himself.

So Rock falls, and he falls hard.

Now the loving can truly begin.

—

Maybe its my self-doubts, maybe I wish sometimes I could just fall off a cliff too. Or maybe I’ve got a new thing for Rock Hudson, or just simpering strongmen in general. Whatever it is, this bravura moment – literally, its over-the-top! – in Douglas Sirk’s 1955 melodrama-rama All That Heaven Allows, which I just watched for the first time this week, is easily one of my favorite film moments of all time. It made me exclaim aloud – “Oh no!!!” – right into my partner’s ear. It’s been a few days, however, and I thankfully think her ear drums have healed.

There is certainly more Rock in my future. I watched Written On the Wind last night, in which Rock plays another Man of Nature – well, a man of peasant stock anyway – with two first names: Mitch Wayne. Wind wasn’t nearly as winning as All That – Sirk never does anything like push Rock off a cliff, though a certain special moment between a sulking Robert Stack and an enthusiastic youngster bouncing on a trick pony is worth looking out for.

Family Circus takes the yucks to Iraq

Imperialism, imperialism, everywhere imperialism… even in the funny pages. Thanks to mom for sending me this.

Poopie

Isamu: A mess, isn’t it?
Minoru: Fun, isn’t it?

I’m not too familiar with the renowned Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu; all I know about him and his film’s I’ve accrued from watching his Tokyo Story (or at least the 3/4 of it I stayed awake for), and essentially hearing rumors about how he’s made something like 70 films, all of which are incredibly similar in style. Tonight I watched Good Morning (1959), and it certainly fit the rumors about the repetition of style. Not only is this a talkie, color remake of an earlier silent film by him; like Tokyo Story it is filmed completely in still, unmoving camera shots that will move closer for a close up, but never pan, or swivel. But I suspect the sparseness of the style serves to isolate the emotions of the story, which I felt is what happened with Tokyo Story and may be one reason why Ozu is so renowned.

The emotions or feelings at the center of Good Morning are bound up in childhood. In a sense, it’s really just a story about two young boys and their struggle to watch television despite the wishes of their parents. The stillness of the camera emphasizes the rigid walls of the buildings and structures, making the the boys’ neighborhood seem like a labyrinth (I guess Ozu’s known for his interiors – thank god he lived in an age before Trading Spaces). The camera is also placed low to the floor, which – intentionally or not – further emphasizes the boys’ point of view (oddly enough, this works especially in scenes where the boys aren’t even around). These things are apparently typical of Ozu, but they’re especially suited for documenting childhood.

All that and a great many charming fart jokes make for a film that can rightly be called “whimsical” and yet never carries any of the contrivances usually associated with that phrase. Cuteness can be grating, but Good Morning is a guilt-free pleasantry. There’s something smarter in the movie going on too: the very title of the film comes from a rant by one boy about the superficial pleasantries of adults, such as cheap greetings like “Good Morning,” a point well taken when Ozu shows us the economic struggles of the neighborhood fathers or the endless gossip of the housewives. This even as the same boy throws a terrible tantrum over not having access to the most superficial pleasantry of them all: television. In Good Morning, wisdom is clearly a collective effort by all ages, even if it remains within the conventional confines of the family unit.

Plus, the fact that the final image – and the last joke – are scatalogical leaves open the splendid possibility that Ozu’s use of poop might be a subtle critique of enforced family harmony. Not likely, but one can dream…

To Be (Effective), Or Not To Be…

This summer I spent a few great weeks with my pal Matt in Bloomington, Indiana. Since I left, he’s been a busy guy. He spent a few months volunteering with the Midwest Pages to Prisoners project, then began working with Community for Effective Justice. CEJ began three years ago after an inmate was tasered to death by a guard, and operates a non-profit, New Life-New Leaf, a group that works directly with inmates in Bloomington’s local jail to help them navigate the system and exercise their rights as inmates.

Matt first got involved by facilitating a class for male inmates on how to be better fathers. In late February, he began working on a campaign to repeal a federal ban that denyies those convicted of drug offenses government assistance of any kind – that’s financial aid, food stamps, help with housing, anything. This lack of resources makes it really, really hard – near impossible – for ex-felons to get back on their feet after being released from prison. I don’t know what the prospects for success are for the campaign, but its first event, a community forum, (the flyer for which is above) garnered some great coverage in the Indiana University daily paper, followed by an editorial by the paper calling for a lift on the public assistance ban.

Matt’s been doing really inspiring work – and at the same time, he’s wrestling with a dilemma a lot of radicals wrestle with, myself included. As an anarchist, he doesn’t just want a better prison system, he wants a society that has no need for prisons at all – and so he’d very much like to be around people who share the same radical analysis of society. In Bloomington, most of those folks are to be found at the Pages to Prisoners project, which is hosted by the local anarchist bookstore, Boxcar Books.

But after months with that program, Matt became frustrated with the insular nature of the project – not that sending free books to prisoners isn’t absolutely essential work, work the Midwest P to P peeps are masters at, but that the project had very little connection with inmates, face to face, in a local setting, not simply through reading letters and filling book requests. So Matt has had to compromise his radical perspective to be involved in practical work with a real constituency – local inmates – while Community for Effective Justice does not connect its work to a larger analysis of society.

How to be effective and radical at the same time? I only have time for the moment to tell Matt’s story, a story still in the making with no conclusion, but there’s hope. Critical Resistance seems the best example of an organization doing practical work tied to a larger analysis, and two books recently released by INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence hint they’ve got an idea of what they are doing as well. I’m sure there’s a huge list of other organizations and projects worth noting… Hopefully I’ll list more in the future. If you can link of any, name drop ‘em in the comments section!